Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom

by Stephen Engstrom, Pittsburgh

Although Kant's moral philosophy is often regarded as sharply opposed to an-

cient ethics, even the most cursory survey reveals that it includes many of the con-
cepts — or at any rate many of the terms — prominent in ancient ethical thought.
The idea of the highest good, for example, which could well be described as the
starting point for ancient ethics, figures centrally within his philosophy. And Kant's
characterization of ethics proper as the "doctrine of virtue" reflects the importance
the traditional ethical concept of virtue has in his thinking. It is clear, moreover,
that Kant intends this continuity with tradition to be more than merely terminologi-
cal. The ethical doctrine he expounds purports to be an articulation of ethical
thought itself - what he calls "common moral rational knowledge" - and it there-
fore aims to elaborate in a systematic way the fundamental ideas and principles
underlying traditional ethical philosophy.
Yet as one looks more closely at the specifics of Kant's moral philosophy, one
can easily get the impression that, despite the presence of the traditional terminol-
ogy, the underlying ideas are new and radically different, and that a number of
important ancient concepts have fallen to the periphery or even disappeared altoge-
ther. Although Kant has much to say about virtue in general, it is, to say the least,
very difficult to find within his ethics anything resembling an exposition or even
an acknowledgement of the traditional cardinal virtues. And if we ask specifically
about the virtue the ancients placed first among the virtues, namely, wisdom, or
practical wisdom, we find only a few passing references. Indeed, it is a familiar
criticism of Kant's ethics that, with its characteristic (and characteristically modern)
emphasis on the good will, it fails to appreciate the ethical importance of this
distinctive form of practical intelligence and judgment — what the ancients called
phronesis.1
But despite the fact that Kant's term for wisdom — Weisheit — occurs only infre-
quently in his texts, it is not difficult to show that the concept he means to express
by it lies at the very heart of his ethics. As will be argued below, what this concept
picks out is the very thing the criticism just mentioned would lead us least of all to
expect, namely, the good will itself, though considered in a relation different from
the one in which it is usually viewed. Admittedly, this suggestion that Kant identifies
wisdom with the good will may at first, if credited at all, appear only to bear out
1
See, for example, Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue, 2d ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 154-55.

Kant-Studien 88. Jahrg., S. 16-43

© Walter de Gruyter 1997
ISSN 0022-8877
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 17

the suspicion, raised above, that Kant has attached traditional terminology to ideas
quite different from those intended in ancient usage. For it is well known that the
ancients understood wisdom to be the sort of knowledge whose possession brings
happiness, or eudaimonia, whereas the good will, as Kant understands it, lies in a
firm adherence to duty, regardless of whether one's happiness is thereby promoted.
It will emerge below, however, that Kant has very good reasons — deep and impor-
tant ones — for thinking that the idea of the good will lies at the bottom of the
ancient idea of wisdom.
In the pages to follow, Kant's understanding of the concept of wisdom will be
examined and briefly compared with one prominent ancient understanding of the
concept, that of Plato's Socrates. One reason for undertaking this examination is
that it will help us to situate Kant's moral philosophy in relation to ancient ethics
and thereby check, to some extent, our common tendency to think of Kant and the
ancients as sharply opposed. But the primary reason is that — as should be clear
by the end of this paper — an appreciation of Kant's identification of the good will
and wisdom enhances our understanding of what the good will itself is and helps
us make sense of his striking pronouncement regarding it.

/. The good will

1. The first chapter of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals — and

his moral philosophy as a whole, one could even say — famously begins with the
following remarkable proposition:
Nothing can possibly be conceived at all in the world, nor generally even outside it, that
can be regarded without qualification as good, except a good will. [G 393]2

2
Listed below are the abbreviations used in references to Kant's works and the translations
on which my own translations of quoted passages are usually based. Except for references
to the Critique of Pure Reason, which use the numbering of the first (A) and second (B)
editions, and references to the Lectures on Ethics, which use the numbering of the edition
edited by Gerd Gerhardt (Eine Vorlesung über Ethik, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschen-
buch Verlag, 1990), all page references use the numbering of the appropriate volume of
Kants gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Deutschen (formerly Königlich Preußi-
schen) Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter [and predecessors],
1902—); citations of Kant's minor works are given, without abbreviated title, by the volume
and page numbers of this edition. References to the Religion within the Limits of Reason
Alone and the Lectures on Ethics include in square brackets the page location in the transla-
tion.
Anth Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary J. Gregor (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1974).
G Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper
and Row, 1964), a reprint of The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson and Company,
1948).
KpV Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
18 Stephen Engstrom

Since this proposition will be of central concern in much of what is to follow,

we may begin with a brief examination of the first two paragraphs of Chapter I,
in which Kant elucidates this proposition by contrasting the good will with a variety
of other items that belong to a familiar traditional list of things regarded as
"goods".3
The first paragraph continues as follows:
Understanding, wit, judgment, and any other talents of the mind we may care to name, or
boldness, resolution, and constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without
doubt in many respects good and desirable [wünschenswert]; but they can also be extremely
bad and harmful if the will, which is to make use of these gifts of nature, and whose peculiar
constitution is for this reason called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts of
fortune. Power, wealth, honor, even health and that complete well-being and contentment
with one's state that goes by the name of happiness [Glückseligkeit], produce boldness, and
thereby often over-boldness as well, where no good will is present by which their influence
on the mind and herewith also the whole principle of action may be corrected and made
universally purposive; not to mention that a rational and impartial spectator can never be
pleased by the sight of the uninterrupted prosperity of a being graced by no touch of a pure
and good will, and that consequently the good will seems to constitute the indispensable
condition of even the worthiness to be happy.

As is readily apparent, all of the other items surveyed here are located under the
genus gift and ordered according to the following taxonomy: Gifts divide into gifts
of nature and gifts of fortune, and gifts of nature divide again into talents of the
mind and qualities of temperament. So a general contrast is being drawn between
these gifts and the good will. The gifts are "without doubt in many respects good
and desirable; but they can also be extremely bad and harmful" and hence cannot
be regarded without qualification as good.
But Kant is not merely claiming that there is a fundamental difference between
the good will and these other goods. In characterizing the latter as gifts, he also
implies that there is a definite practical relation in which they stand to the will. For

Company, Liberal Arts Press, 1956).

KrV Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan and Com-
pany, 1929).
KU Critique of Judgment, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, Clarendon Press, 1952). (Meredith's translation was originally published in
1911.)
MS The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
R Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt
H. Hudson (La Salle, Ind.: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1934; reprint, New
York: Harper and Row, 1960).
VE Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (London: Methuen, 1930).
3
Similar enumerations of "goods" can be found in Plato: see Meno 87—88 and Euthydemus
279—SI (these passages will be considered below in § II). Though the items Kant lists are
not explicitly identified as goods, all the things mentioned in the first paragraph are said to
be gifts (Gaben), and to call something a gift — as opposed, say, to a curse — is to imply
that it is in some sense good (see note 4 below).
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 19

unlike the bare idea of something given, the idea of a gift involves the idea not only
of a recipient distinct from what is given, but in particular of a recipient who is in
general able to appreciate what is given as good or serviceable for some purpose
and to put it, where possible, to use.4 And because the idea of a recipient who
might thus make use of the gifts received involves the idea of a will, through whose
exercise the gifts are used (cf. VE 37 [p. 26]), the will must be understood, not as
a gift itself, but as something belonging to the makeup of anyone who receives and
uses gifts (and indeed to the essential makeup, or constitution, since the general
ability to make use of what is given is not an ability one can have by accident). So
in addition to being contrasted, the good will and the gifts are held to be related:
Kant says explicitly that the will is to "make use" of the gifts of nature, and it
seems clear from what he goes on to say about the gifts of fortune that he takes
the will to be related to these in essentially the same way. Indeed, it is by appealing
to this relation that Kant argues that the gifts differ from the good will in not being
good without qualification: since what can be used can also be misused, all of the
gifts can be "bad and harmful".
The case of happiness might well seem to be an exception, for we generally
suppose that the things we make use of are means, whereas happiness is an end.
Kant says that the influence of happiness on the mind is "corrected and made
universally purposive" by the good will, yet we would not ordinarily speak of such
correction as a making use of happiness. On the other hand, such correction does
amount to way of dealing with one's happiness — to a kind of managing or hand-
ling of one's good fortune. It therefore seems likely that in suggesting that the will
makes use of its gifts, Kant has in mind as well this more general idea of manage-
ment, and perhaps too, such related ideas as those of direction, control, and gover-
nance. Kant's general point about the gifts, then, can be expressed as follows: any
gift can produce or contribute to bad effects if it is not properly used or dealt with
by the will.
2. In the second paragraph, Kant directs his attention to certain qualities that
have an especially close relation to the good will:
Some qualities even promote this good will itself and can much facilitate its work. They
have nevertheless no inner unconditioned worth, but always presuppose a good will, which
restricts the esteem in which these qualities are otherwise rightly held and does not allow
them to be regarded as absolutely good. Moderation in emotions and passions, self-mastery,
and sober reflection are not only good in many respects, but seem even to constitute a part
of the inner worth of the person. Yet they are far from being properly declared good without

4
Thus, Kant later says that the faculties in a rational being are "serviceable and given to it
for all sorts of possible purposes" (G 423). Since gifts have this relation to use (with one
exception, to be noted below), they are good in the sense in which the useful is good. So
gifts can be regarded as goods, though the same could not be said generally of things given.
Pain and suffering are sometimes "givens", but they are not in general regarded as "gifts"
(though of course they may be in certain cases, as when they are thought to be "blessings
in disguise").
20 Stephen Engstrom

qualification (however unconditionally they were praised by the ancients). For without prin-
ciples of a good will they may become exceedingly bad; and the very coolness of a scoundrel
makes him not only much more dangerous, but also in our eyes immediately more abominable
than he would have been taken to be without it. [G 393—94]

Commentators often express uncertainty as to how the qualities Kant speaks of

here are related to the kinds of gift he distinguished in the opening paragraph.
Often the qualities are taken to be qualities of temperament and hence regarded as
gifts of nature.5 How they are to be understood will be considered below (§ IV.2).
For the moment it will suffice to note what is in any case obvious, namely, that
Kant is arguing that the goodness of these qualities is like the goodness of the gifts
mentioned in the first paragraph in that it depends on the presence of the good
will: these qualities and gifts can be bad if they are not properly used (or dealt
with), and since it is the will that makes use of them, their proper use depends on
the presence of the good will (cf. R 3-4n [p. 3], VE 37 [p. 26]).
3. Kant employs the following criterion in separating the gifts and qualities from
the good will: If something regarded as good can have (that is, produce or contrib-
ute to) bad effects, then it is not good without qualification. Happiness, for exam-
ple, is placed among the qualified goods on the grounds that where the will is not
good happiness often produces over-boldness.6 Hence something is good without
qualification only if it satisfies the condition of never having any bad effects.
But in the third paragraph Kant introduces what appears to be a further condi-
tion that the good will satisfies: "The good will is good not through what it effects
or accomplishes, not through its fitness for attaining some proposed end: it is good

5
See, for example, H. J. Paton, The Categorical Imperative (London: Hutchinson & Co.,
Ltd., 1947), p. 38. Klaus Reich suggests that Kant has in mind three of the four ancient
cardinal virtues - namely, temperance, courage, and wisdom - and that he is thinking
specifically of Cicero's discussion of these virtues in his exposition in De officiis of the Stoic
doctrines of Panaetius ("Kant and Greek Ethics" [Part II], Mind 48 [1939]: 449-50). This
proposal has some plausibility, but these virtues are also mentioned in the passages in Plato's
Meno and Euthydemus cited above and in other ancient sources with which Kant seems to
have been familiar (note, for instance, his brief remarks about the Epicurean philosophy at
KpV 115, 126). Kant does not say that the qualities he has in mind were praised by some
particular school or individual; he simply says, speaking quite generally, that they were
praised by the ancients.
6
Over-boldness is produced through a misemployment of practical reason's principle that
virtue must be the condition (necessary and sufficient) of happiness (see KpV 110—11). The
misemployment takes place whenever, owing to the influence of self-love, one interprets a
comfortable life as a confirmation of one's own supposed virtue and worth (see MS 460).
On the other hand, the proper employment of the same principle by "a rational and impar-
tial spectator" is the reason why this spectator "can never be pleased by the sight of the
uninterrupted prosperity of a being graced by no touch of a pure and good will". (Since
over-boldness is produced through the misemployment of practical reason's principle, it
does not, strictly speaking, result from happiness alone; so Kant's claim that where the will
is not good happiness often produces over-boldness needs to be understood as the claim
that happiness often contributes to the development of over-boldness in the sense that it
facilitates it.)
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 21

through its willing alone — that is, good in itself [an sich gut]" (G 394). Thus it is
from the good will itself, and not from its contribution to anything outside of itself,
that its goodness derives; accordingly, Kant characterizes such goodness as "inner"
rather than outer, as "absolute" rather than relative (G 394).
Kant's proposition that the good will is the sole unqualified good therefore ap-
pears to involve the following two contentions about the good will:
(1) The good will is good in itself, not through what it effects or accomplishes.
(2) The good will never has any bad effects.
Though Kant does not seem to think it necessary in the opening paragraphs of
Chapter I to explain or offer grounds in support of these contentions, readers are
often puzzled about their meaning and their basis. How they are to be understood,
and whether they are independent of one another, are questions to be considered
below (§ III.2—3). But we shall be in a better position to address these questions if
we first examine an argument from antiquity that is recalled by the specific way in
which Kant elucidates his proposition concerning the good will.

//. The good will and wisdom

1. Kant's argument that only the good will can be regarded without qualification
as good bears a striking resemblance to an argument concerning wisdom that Plato
has Socrates employ in the Meno and in the Euthydemus.7 As presented in the
Meno, the argument is intended to show that wisdom (phronesis) is the only thing
good and beneficial by itself alone, and it occurs as part of a larger argument for
the conclusion that virtue is knowledge or wisdom (87d—89 a). Socrates prefaces
that larger argument by observing that, since virtue is itself good, it will be correct
to regard it as a kind of knowledge if it can be shown that there is "nothing good
that knowledge does not embrace" — nothing good, in other words, that "is dif-
ferent and separate from knowledge" (87d). He then begins the argument by point-
ing out that since virtue makes us good, and hence beneficial (since all that is good

7
In what follows I shall focus on the argument as it is presented in the Meno rather than on
the more elaborate version in the Euthydemus. The topics under discussion in the Meno —
what virtue is and how it is acquired — bear more directly on the questions Kant is address-
ing in the Groundwork; and though I am not concerned in this paper with the question
whether Kant actually read either of these dialogues, I take the Meno to be the one with
which he was more likely familiar. For some speculation regarding Kant's encounter with
Plato, see Klaus Reich, "Kant and Greek Ethics" (Part I), Mind 48 (1939): 338-54, and
Max Wundt, Kant als Metaphysiker, Stuttgart, 1924, pp. 161-64.
Quotations from Plato are based on the following translations. Meno: G. M. A. Grube
(Plato: five Dialogues, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981); Euthydemus:
W. R. M. Lamb (Laches, Protagoras, Menof Euthydemus, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1962).
22 Stephen Engstrom

is beneficial), virtue itself is something beneficial; and he completes the argument

by undertaking to show that the beneficial is wisdom.
To show that the beneficial is wisdom, Socrates first surveys the various things
we say benefit us — things such as health, strength, beauty, and wealth — and after
pointing out that these things are sometimes harmful says that the directing factor
that in each case determines whether they are beneficial is use: they benefit us
insofar as they are rightly used. He goes on to make a parallel point about the
things of the soul, mentioning in particular temperance, justice, courage, mental
quickness, memory, and magnificence. These things, insofar as they are distinct
from wisdom, sometimes benefit us and sometimes harm us. For example, courage
without wisdom — mere boldness — can be harmful, as can temperance and mental
quickness; but if directed by wisdom these things are beneficial. In sum, "all that
the soul undertakes and endures, if directed by wisdom, ends in happiness [eudai-
monia], but if directed by ignorance, it ends in the opposite" (88 c). On the strength
of these considerations, Socrates maintains that all the things of the soul are by
themselves alone (auta kath' hauta)8 neither beneficial nor harmful, but accompa-
nied by wisdom they become beneficial and accompanied by folly they become
harmful. And since it is a wise soul that rightly uses and directs the things men-
tioned first — wealth and such — these things too are good and beneficial only
under the direction of wisdom. Therefore the beneficial is wisdom.
Though the argument just outlined is directed toward the conclusion that wis-
dom is the only thing beneficial by itself alone, Socrates' claim that all that is good
is beneficial renders this conclusion effectively equivalent to the claim that wisdom
is the only thing good by itself alone.9 Thus, as we have noted, Socrates indicates
8
Following Gregory Vlastos' suggestion, I render auto kath' hauto as 'by itself alone' (for
discussion, see his Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1991, 305—6). I choose this rendering rather than 'in itself partly in order to leave
undecided whether Plato's auto kath' hauto and Kant's an sich are to be understood as
expressing the same idea.
9
Socrates' explicit assertion that all good things are beneficial (öphelima) (87 e; cf. 96 e—
97 a) might lead the reader to wonder whether his conception of the good is purely instru-
mental — that is, whether he holds that whatever is good is good only because it is beneficial
(in which case 'useful' and 'advantageous' would be preferable to 'beneficial' as transla-
tions). (See T. H. Irwin, "Socrates the Epicurean?", Illinois Classical Studies 11 [1986]: 92 n;
reprinted in Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, ed. H. Benson, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992.) If we were to attribute an instrumental conception of the good to Socrates,
then we would have to conclude that he would not assert of wisdom what Kant asserts of
the good will in (1) above, namely, that it is good in itself. The following considerations
are worth noting, however. First, Socrates' assertion that everything good is beneficial does
not imply the instrumental claim that whatever is good is good only because it is beneficial.
The instrumental interpretation is not a reading forced on us by the text, but a hypothesis
about Socrates' reason for thinking that everything good is beneficial. Second, it is not
necessary to adopt this hypothesis in order to understand the use to which Socrates puts
his assertion in his argument. If Socrates holds that everything good is beneficial, then it
makes sense — regardless of whether the instrumental hypothesis is correct — for him to
look at a thing's consequences in order to determine whether it is good, and to suppose
that one can show that it is not good by itself alone by pointing out a harmful consequence.
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 23

at the outset of the larger argument that the conclusion that virtue is knowledge is
to be reached by showing that there is nothing good that is "different and separate
from knowledge", and in concluding he says that "all other human things depend
on the soul, and those of the soul itself on wisdom, if they are to be good" (88 e).
Moreover, in the version of the argument presented in the Euthydemus (at 278 e—
281 e) Socrates employs a very similar line of reasoning to support precisely this
conclusion that wisdom is the only thing good by itself alone (auto kath' hauto).
Socrates' criterion for determining whether something regarded as good (or bene-
ficial) is good by itself alone appears to be the same as Kant's for determining
whether it is good without qualification. Both Socrates and Kant make their deter-
mination by considering whether the thing regarded as good can have any bad
effects. So something's being good by itself alone amounts to its being good without
qualification. The striking similarity between Socrates' and Kant's arguments can
thus be expressed as follows: Socrates and Kant each isolate a single factor or
condition that makes for the right use of things, and from this they conclude both
that whether these things are good or bad, beneficial or harmful, depends on the
presence or absence of the isolated decisive factor, and that the only thing good
without qualification is that factor itself.
2. But this striking similarity brings into relief what appears to be a sharp dis-
agreement about what the decisive factor is. Socrates takes it to be wisdom and
hence knowledge, or a kind of knowledge, whereas Kant mentions only the will.
Moreover, Socrates claims that this knowledge leads to happiness, or eudaimonia^
whereas Kant maintains not only (as we have noted) that the good will derives its
goodness, "not through its fitness for attaining some proposed end", but "through
its willing alone", but also that the establishment of a good will can restrict in
many ways the attainment of happiness and even "reduce happiness to less than
nothing" (G 396). Indeed, it might even be supposed that Kant is consciously oppos-
ing himself to Socrates and the ancients. For in distinguishing the good will from
the mental talents of understanding, judgment, and wit, and from the quality of
sober reflection, which he says the ancients praised "unconditionally", Kant is con-
trasting the good will with qualities that might well seem to be, if not the same as
wisdom, at least intimately related to it.
On closer inspection, however, the difference between wisdom and the good will
is more difficult to discern. A number of Kant's remarks in Chapter I of the
Groundwork suggest that he regards the good will as a kind of knowledge and
even identifies it with wisdom.

Finally, Socrates' reason for thinking that everything good is beneficial need not lie in the
thought that what is good is good because it is beneficial. It is possible that he thinks,
conversely, that what is good is beneficial because it is good. (As will emerge below, Kant's
conception of inner goodness provides a way of understanding this suggestion.) So Socrates'
claim that everything good is beneficial need not imply that he would not assert of wisdom
what Kant asserts of the good will in (1).
24 Stephen Engstrom

Consider first the title of Chapter I, in which Kant indicates that he takes as
his starting point a certain sort of knowledge — what he calls gemeine sittliche
Vernunfterkenntnis. The usual rendering of sittliche Vernunfterkenntnis in the Eng-
lish translations is "rational knowledge of morality".10 This translation can easily
suggest that the knowledge under consideration has morality as its object, and
perhaps in addition that this knowledge is "reflective" in a sense that implies a
detachment, a stepping back, from a practice or an activity in order to bring it
under scrutiny. But there is no such suggestion in sittliche Vernunfterkenntnis. The
knowledge Kant has in mind is practical, not theoretical (cf. KrV Bix—x). It is not
knowledge of an object, morality, that exists independently of the knowledge of it;
it is rather morality itself, and its object is something whose existence results from
it as its effect. Such knowledge may itself become the object of reflective consider-
ation, as happens when it becomes philosophical or otherwise self-conscious; but
as we shall presently see, Kant makes clear in Chapter I (especially in the last three
paragraphs) that sittliche Vernunfterkenntnis is not in the first instance reflective
knowledge.
We will do better, then, if we read gemeine sittliche Vernunfterkenntnis in a
straightforward way and take the starting point of Chapter I to be "common moral
rational knowledge". As the knowledge in which common morality consists, such
knowledge is the knowledge of right and wrong, of good and bad, that we all have
insofar as we share a common morality, even if we do not always act in accordance
with it, and even if it is more obscure and confused in some than it is in others.
And as the analysis of the concept of duty that Kant goes on to provide in Chapter I
reveals, this knowledge of right and wrong, of good and bad, is precisely what
moves a person of good will to act. Kant maintains that action "from duty" is
action from such knowledge: the representation of law that determines the good
will in action from duty is the very principle that "common human reason" has
"always before its eyes" as its standard in practical judgment (G 402, 403). So
common moral rational knowledge is clearly involved in the exercise of the good
will.
This is not to say, however, that such knowledge is to be identified with good
willing. Since Kant does not exclude the possibility of having a recognition of duty
even though one's maxim and action are in conflict with it (see G 406ff.), he does
not hold that the presence of common moral knowledge implies that the will is
actually good. Thus good willing involves something more than bare common
moral rational knowledge: in good willing, such knowledge engages the will. A
person of good will not only knows what is right and wrong, but also wills accord-
ingly.
But though good willing is not the same as common moral knowledge, some of
Kant's remarks toward the end of Chapter I suggest that it is the same as wisdom.

10
This is the translation of Abbott, Paton, and Ellington; Beck's is the same, except that
"morals" is substituted for "morality".
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 25

Alluding at one point to the maieutic practice of Socrates, Kant suggests that wis-
dom is already at least implicitly present in the "happy simplicity" of "common
human understanding": "It would be easy to show", he says,
that common human reason ... is well able to distinguish, in every case that occurs, good
from bad, what is dutiful from what is contrary to duty, if, without in the least teaching it
anything new, one only makes it attend to its own principle, as Socrates did, and that therefore
neither science nor philosophy is needed in order to know what one must do to be honest
and good, and even wise [weise] and virtuous. [G 404]
Here wisdom is implicitly distinguished from two sorts of knowledge. On the one
hand, wisdom is said to require "neither science nor philosophy", and hence it is
not to be identified with the philosopher's abstract knowledge of morality, which
comprises the popular philosophy expounded in Chapter I of the Groundwork as
well as the scientific, or systematic, knowledge of morality and practical reason
articulated in Chapters II and III. Though such knowledge is ultimately needed if
wisdom is to be securely sustained as society and culture develop (G 404—5; see
also KpV 163, 141), wisdom itself "consists more in doing and not doing than in
scientific knowing [Wissen]" (G 405; see also R 58 [p. 51]). But on the other hand,
wisdom is also not to be identified with bare common moral rational knowledge.
To know what one must do to be wise is not yet to be wise; wisdom consists in
"doing and not doing". Yet since one could not be wise if one did not know what
one must do to be wise, the common moral knowledge that human reason has
through its ability to "attend to its own principle" is clearly something that wisdom
involves. The "doing and not doing" in which wisdom consists must therefore be
a doing and not doing according to the moral knowledge that human reason has
through attending to its own principle; insofar as this knowledge moves a person
to act, it amounts to wisdom in that person. But since the power to act from
principles is just the will itself (G 412, KpV 125), and since as was noted above the
principle that determines a good will in action from duty is precisely the principle
of moral knowledge that common human reason has "always before its eyes" as
its standard of judgment, wisdom and good willing are the same.
So Kant's proposition concerning the good will — that it is the sole unqualified
good — is in effect equally a claim about wisdom. Indeed, the following remark
makes clear that Kant himself thinks that what he has asserted about the good will
— that it makes for the right use of things and hence is the sole unqualified good,
on which all other goods depend for their goodness — is also true of wisdom: "life
in general, as regards the enjoyment of it, which depends on fortuitous circum-
stances, has no worth of its own [eigenen Werth] at all; only with regard to the use
to which it is put, the ends to which it is directed, does it have worth — a worth
that is provided for the human being not by fortune, but by wisdom alone" (Anth
239). Hence Kant seems to be agreeing with Socrates that wisdom is the only thing
good by itself alone.
3. But here of course we must ask whether the wisdom Kant speaks of is the
same as the wisdom with which Socrates is concerned. The wisdom Socrates has
26 Stephen Engstrom

in mind — let us call it "Socratic wisdom" — is knowledge that leads to happiness,

or eudaimonia. As we have noted, Socrates says that "all that the soul undertakes
and endures, if directed by wisdom, ends in happiness, but if directed by ignorance,
it ends in the opposite" (88 c). And in the Euthydemus he arrives at much the same
conclusion: "knowledge, it would seem, provides not only good fortune but even
welfare [eupragia] for man in all he possesses and does" (281 b)'. Socratic wisdom
therefore has the appearance of being a sort of practical knowledge quite different
from what Kant understands by Weisheit, and much closer to what he calls Klugheit
— that is, to prudence. For as the following considerations confirm, it is Klugheit,
not the good will, that has happiness, or Glückseligkeit, as its object.11
The problem of achieving happiness, as Kant points out, consists largely in the
deliberative problem of determining specifically where our happiness, our real,
achievable happiness, lies (KpV 25). Prudence is directed toward solving this delib-
erative problem. As Kant characterizes it, prudence is a rational capacity, acquired
through practice and experience, that consists in "the discernment [Einsicht] to
unite all [one's] purposes to [one's] own lasting advantage" (G 416 n, 417—18), and
it effects this unification by bringing the natural inclinations "into harmony in a
whole, which is called happiness" (R 58 [p. 51]). By harmonizing the conceptions
of the objects of one's inclinations in a conception of happiness as an end realizable
through action, prudential reason proceeds "from the universal to the particular"
(Anth 266) to arrive at a specific conception of that end compatible with one's
circumstances (KrV A800/B828; cf. KpV 63). Prudence thus specifies the end of
happiness and is directed toward its realization.
The good will, on the other hand, is primarily directed toward a quite different
purpose, namely, the realization of itself, as the unqualified good (G 396), and hence
it is fundamentally distinct from prudence. At one point Kant says in effect that
our conception of prudence is such that from the mere presence of prudence in a
rational being we are not able to infer the presence of the good will (nor even the
presence of the least awareness of the moral law, the awareness in which moral
rational knowledge consists) (R 26n [p. 21]).12 Nor, conversely, does the presence
of the good will imply the presence of prudence: "I need no far-reaching acumen to
find out what I have to do in order that my willing be morally good. Inexperienced
in the ways of the world, incapable of being prepared for all the chances that

11
There are of course other apparent differences that might be noted. The interpretation
outlined above implies that for Kant it is possible to have moral rational knowledge but
not wisdom. This view will amount to a point of difference with Socrates if Socrates holds
that it is in no sense possible to do wrong while knowing that one is doing wrong.
12
Prudence is not explicitly mentioned in the passage, but the rational being in question is
characterized as applying "the most rational reflection on what concerns the greatest sum
of incentives as well as the means to achieve the end thereby determined", and such applica-
tion of rational reflection is just what Kant elsewhere identifies with prudence (KrV A800/
B828).
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 27

happen in it, I ask myself only 'Can you also will that your maxim should become
a universal law?' " (G 403; cf. KpV 36).
If the good will and prudence are thus fundamentally distinct, and if, as noted
above, Kant maintains that the establishment of the good will can have the conse-
quence that one's happiness is in many ways restricted or even reduced to less than
nothing, then it would appear that Socratic wisdom is much the same as prudence,
and quite different from Weisheit. Socratic wisdom leads to happiness; Kantian
wisdom does not.
4. But this appearance that Socrates' conception of wisdom and Kant's concep-
tion of Weisheit are different rests at least in part on the misleading appearance
that Socrates' conception of eudaimonia and Kant's conception of Glückseligkeit
are the same. Both Kant and Socrates hold that wisdom is the only thing good
without qualification, and as we shall see below Kant agrees with Socrates that
virtue is wisdom; hence they both agree that virtue is included in our ultimate end
as its chief if not only component. But whereas Socrates identifies eudaimonia as
our ultimate end and thus includes virtue within eudaimonia,13 Kant denies — and
takes the ancients also to deny (VE 16 [p. 6]) — that Glückseligkeit is our ultimate
end, and he does so precisely because he recognizes from a consideration of its
concept that it does not include the unqualified good of virtue (KrV A813/B841,
KpV IW—11). Even if Socrates and Kant do not share exactly the same conceptions
of virtue and wisdom, their conceptions are close enough to warrant us in taking
Socrates' inclusion of virtue within eudaimonia and Kant's exclusion of virtue from
Glückseligkeit as a basis for concluding that Socrates' conception of eudaimonia
and Kant's conception of Glückseligkeit are by no means to be identified. Therefore
the fact that Socratic wisdom leads to eudaimonia does not show it to be more
akin to prudence than to Weisheit.
Moreover, there is good reason to think that Socrates would deny that wisdom
amounts to prudence, and that he would instead say of prudence what we have
seen him say of mental quickness and of the other things of the soul, namely, that
it is good and beneficial only under the direction of wisdom. Socrates says at the
beginning of the Meno that until he knows what virtue is he cannot know how it
is to be acquired (71 a—b), and the ensuing discussion suggests that he thinks quite
generally that one cannot know how something comes to be until one knows what

13
I shall not consider in any detail how Socrates understands the relation between virtue and
eudaimonia, except to note that in the argument in the Meno considered above, Socrates'
remark that "all that the soul undertakes and endures, if directed by wisdom, ends in
happiness [eudaimonia], but if directed by ignorance, it ends in the opposite" (88 c) sug-
gests, when judged in light of its context, that eudaimonia includes the outcome of the
wise (and beneficial) direction of the things of the soul and hence is not to be identified
with wisdom alone. Vlastos argues plausibly that for Socrates virtue is a component of
eudaimonia that is by itself necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia, yet not the only com-
ponent that eudaimonia can have. See Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, 200—232.
28 Stephen Engstrom

it is.14 So he would presumably say that until one knows what one's end is one
cannot know how it is to be achieved. Hence for Socrates if wisdom is knowledge
of how to bring our ultimate end, eudaimonia, into being, it must involve knowl-
edge of what that ultimate end is. But since prudence is concerned with realizing
the end of Glückseligkeit, an end in which virtue, the chief component of the ulti-
mate end, is not included, bare prudence is not directed toward our ultimate end
and does not imply any knowledge of it.
Weisheit, on the other hand, does involve such knowledge. This is clear from
two passages in the Doctrine of Virtue, in which Weisheit is characterized explicitly
in terms of the ultimate end. Kant says that human wisdom "consists in the har-
mony of a being's will with the ultimate end [Endzweck]" (MS 441), and that virtue,
which consists in a "moral strength of the will" (i. e., strength in a good will), "is
called genuine — that is, practical — wisdom, since it makes the ultimate end of
man's existence on earth its own" (MS 405; see also 383).15 Since one cannot make
the ultimate end one's own without knowing what it is, Weisheit involves knowl-
edge of this end.
Such knowledge consists in the determinate conception of the ultimate end, the
conception of Glückseligkeit united with virtue that Kant elaborates in his doctrine
of the highest good. But this knowledge, it must be emphasized, is not, in the first

14
That this thought is of considerable importance within the dialogue can be seen by noting
that it underlies Meno's paradox: when applied in the case of knowledge, the thought that
one cannot know how something comes to be until one knows what it is becomes just the
thought that one cannot know how to acquire knowledge until one knows what one is
seeking and hence, it would appear, already has it (80e). To the extent that virtue is indeed,
as Socrates argues in the passage considered above, a kind of knowledge, the paradox
arises in the specific case of virtue as well: How can one become virtuous without already
being virtuous? The answer to this question implicit in Socrates' exchange with the slave
boy is also detectable in the remark of Kant's concerning common human reason that we
took note of above: "common human reason" is well able to distinguish good from bad
and hence to be wise and virtuous "if, without in the least teaching it anything new, one
only makes it attend to its own principle, as Socrates did" (G 404; see also 397, KpV 8 n,
MS 376, 411, 478). Wisdom and virtue cannot be engendered in one person by another,
not even in the least degree; one must bring them forth from oneself (Anth 200, MS 386).
(This is not to say that one's bringing forth of wisdom and virtue from oneself cannot be
facilitated by another.)
15
Since the virtuous will makes the ultimate end its own, not on account of its strength, but
rather just in being good, a will that makes the ultimate end its own is just a good will.
Hence our earlier identification of the good will with Weisheit is confirmed: a good will,
a wise will, and a will that is in harmony with the ultimate end through making that end
its own are all one and the same. But since Kant holds that the goodness of a will does
not exclude the possibility of impurity — in other words, that there is no incoherence in
the idea that a will, though fundamentally good, might nevertheless, owing to the sort of
weakness in which impurity consists, sometimes fail to will as it should (cf. R 29—30
[p. 25]) — there is a distinction to be drawn between a will's making the ultimate end its
own and its doing so completely or perfectly. Insofar as Weisheit is understood as consisting
in the latter, it is an ideal to which a good will approximates (see MS 383, Anth 200).
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 29

instance, in the abstract, articulated mode achieved through philosophical reflec-

tion. Kant says that genuine Weisheit is practical wisdom, and in asserting this he
is repeating what, as we have already seen, he asserts in the Groundwork, namely,
that Weisheit "consists more in doing and not doing than in scientific knowing".
Since, as we have also seen, Kant maintains (supposing himself to be in agreement
with Socrates) that there is no need to supplement common moral rational knowl-
edge with science or philosophy in order to be wise, such common, prephilosophical
knowledge must already include the knowledge of the ultimate end that Weisheit
involves. Hence what Kant says of the moral law upon achieving his abstract philo-
sophical formulation of it — namely, that common human reason "does not indeed
think it thus separated off in a universal form, but does always have it actually
before its eyes" (G 403) — could also be said of the ultimate end.
The fact that Weisheit is practical also implies, of course, that it is not the same
as bare common knowledge of the ultimate end; as practical, it includes the will's
determination in harmony with this knowledge. At one point Kant says in effect
that the "principle of Weisheit" is that "the ultimate end of reason" be made "the
principle of [one's] action" (MS 375 n).16 Weisheit, then, is indeed knowledge of
the ultimate end, but practically efficacious knowledge: insofar as one is wise, the
knowledge of the ultimate end determines one's will. There are thus two compo-
nents in Kant's conception of wisdom: "Weisheit theoretically regarded signifies the
knowledge of the highest good and practically the conformity of the will to the
highest good" (KpV 130-31; cf. 108).

///. Wisdom and unqualified goodness

1. Our comparison of Kant's argument concerning the good will with Socrates'
argument concerning wisdom has led us away from the opening paragraphs of the
Groundwork and off to the remarks on wisdom that lie scattered about in the texts
of Kant's moral philosophy. We have now to consider whether this excursion has
yielded any discoveries that will prove sound and useful as we return to our starting
point, Kant's proposition concerning the good will.
There are two questions in particular that remain to be addressed. First, are we
now any closer to understanding Kant's proposition itself? We have seen that good

16
I say "in effect" for the following reason. In the passage cited, Kant contrasts the "principle
of wisdom" with the mere "knowledge of what it is our duty to do": the former is "the
inner principle of willing, namely, that the consciousness of this duty be at the same time
the incentive to actions". But this inner principle is just what he was referring to a few
lines earlier when he spoke of making the ultimate end of reason into the principle of
action. For Kant, knowledge of "what it is our duty to do" and knowledge of "the ultimate
end of reason" are at bottom the same. That is just to say in other words what Kant is
saying when he asserts that the duty to promote the highest good does not amount to a
further duty beyond all the others (R 5 [p. 5]).
30 Stephen Engstrom

willing is the same as Weisheit and that Weisheit consists in the will's harmony with
the ultimate end. Do these discoveries help us understand Kant's proposition that
the good will is the sole unqualified good? Second, how well does Kant's character-
ization of Weisheit as the will's harmony with the ultimate end capture our tradi-
tional idea of wisdom? We have seen that Weisheit is not as far removed from
Socratic wisdom as might initially appear, but we have so far ignored what looks
to be a notable discrepancy, namely, that whereas Socratic wisdom seems to fit with
our idea that a wise person is effective in achieving the good, Kant's distinction
between Weisheit and prudence seems to imply that this idea is not accommodated
by his conception of Weisheit.
2. It was noted above (§ 1.3) that Kant's proposition that the good will is the
sole unqualified good seems to involve two contentions: that the good will is good
in itself, rather than through what it effects or accomplishes; and that the good will
never has any bad effects. Both claims need to be examined.
In Chapter II of the Groundwork, Kant characterizes imperatives in terms of
principles of reason that represent possible objects of choice as practically necessary,
and he identifies the practically necessary with the good (G 412—13). Kant's distinc-
tion between hypothetical and categorical imperatives is thus based on a distinction
between two ways in which a thing can be practically necessary or good. An object
of the will is good in a certain relation just if it is necessary for the realization of
some good other than itself. For example, taking a certain medicine is good in this
way if it is necessary for health. Such goodness is recognizable only by considering
the object in relation to something other than itself. If something is good in itself,
on the other hand, its goodness or practical necessity must be recognizable from a
consideration of it itself alone.
Is the goodness of the good will recognizable in this way? It is clear from Kant's
discussion of the good will and duty in Chapter I of the Groundwork that the
internal goodness distinctive of the good will is the same as the goodness present
in morally worthy action, for such action is the expression of the good will.17 Kant
claims that the moral worth of an action lies in its having been done from duty,
and that this moral worth is to be found, not in the action's purpose or outcome,
but in its principle of volition. By these claims he indicates that the internal good-
ness of morally worthy action lies in the fact that such action expresses a will
determined by the recognition of duty — determined, that is, by the recognition of
the unconditional practical necessity of a certain way of willing. Because the practi-
cal necessity in which duty consists has this unconditional character, however, the
will's relation to what duty requires can be understood only as its relation to what
is required by its own inner law, and therefore the moral law must be a law internal
to the will. For only a law internal to the will would amount to a principle internal

17
Thus Kant characterizes moral worth as "inner worth" (G 398) and as "unconditioned and
moral worth" (G 400), using the very terms he had previously employed in marking off
the good will as something that has "inner unconditioned worth" (G 394).
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 31

to the activity of volition itself and therefore one by which the will ought to deter-
mine itself in its exercise regardless of circumstances and hence unconditionally.
But if the law is internal to the will, then the determination of the will's exercise
by this law is matter of the will's being in agreement with its own inner nature.
Since a will that is in agreement with its inner nature is just the will of a person
who acts from the motive of duty, and since such a will is the good will itself, the
good will is a will in agreement with its inner nature. The goodness of the good
will thus consists in its agreement with that nature, and hence its goodness is recog-
nizable from a consideration of it itself alone.
Kant claims in the Critique of Practical Reason that, though the determining
ground of the good will is not any object or end but rather the moral law alone,
nevertheless this law determines or specifies for the will its complete object or
ultimate end, namely, the highest good, understood as the complete good, embrac-
ing virtue and Glückseligkeit together (KpV 109—II). 18 The moral law provides
this specification because its determination of the will involves positive as well as
negative requirements: the moral law not only prohibits certain ways of willing,
but also requires the adoption of certain ends to be realized or promoted, and the
totality of these ends constitutes the highest good. Since a good will is a will deter-
mined by the moral law, the end the moral law specifies for the will is just the end
the good will pursues; and so we see again that the good will is in harmony with
the ultimate end, and therefore that good willing is the same as Weisheit. And since
a thing is perfect insofar as its constitution or character is in harmony with its end
(MS 386), wisdom is just the will's perfection.19 The inner goodness of the good
will can therefore be thought of in either of two ways: either as the will's determina-
tion by, and hence its agreement with, the moral law, its inner nature; or as the
will's perfection, its harmony with the ultimate end, specified for it by that law.
Though these two ways of thinking of the good will's inner goodness are at
bottom equivalent, they differ sharply in the relation in which they consider the
will's exercise. On the first way, the will's exercise is considered in relation to its
inner cause, the moral law; on the second way, its exercise is considered in relation
to the effect or consequence that its inner cause specifies for it. When we think of
good willing as good in itself, as the will's agreement with its inner law, we think
of it in the first way; when we think of good willing as Weisheit, as the will's
18
In the passage cited, Kant speaks of the pure will rather than the good will; but elsewhere
he says that the pure will alone is "good in every respect" (KpV 74), from which it follows
that the pure will and the perfectly good will are one and the same.
19
Thus the two aspects of wisdom that we have seen Kant distinguish — knowledge of the
highest good and the will's agreement with the highest good (KpV 130—31) — are re-
flected in the two aspects of human perfection that he distinguishes: a cultivated under-
standing and a cultivated will (MS 386—87). As Weisheit and the will's perfection are both
the same as good willing, both can be understood in terms of the will's agreement with
the moral law. Thus Kant at one point characterizes Weisheit as "the idea of the lawful
perfect practical employment of reason" (Anth 200), and at another he characterizes moral
perfection as "a will that unconditionally obeys the law" (R 3 n [p. 3]).
32 Stephen Engstrom

harmony with its ultimate end, we think of it in the second way. Thus our apprecia-
tion of the identity of good willing and Weisheit enables us to complement our
recognition that the good will is in agreement with its inner law with the recogni-
tion that it is in harmony with its ultimate end, and this latter recognition — as we
shall presently see — enables us to determine what sort of effects the good will can
have.
3. Let us now consider whether the good will can have any bad effects. We may
begin by recalling three facts concerning Weisheit and the highest good. First, inso-
far as the will is in harmony with the ultimate end, it adopts the highest good as
its own ultimate end, and consequently it is determined in its exercise by the con-
ception of that end. Second, Weisheit is genuine, that is, practical, wisdom: Weisheit
is the harmony of the will with the ultimate end, and since Kant identifies the will
with practical reason and thus conceives of it as a causal power (G 412, 446; cf.
KpV 55, 125), the activity of good willing in which Weisheit consists is, as an exer-
cise of that causal power, to some degree efficacious, given that nature is no step-
mother to the good will (G 394).20 Thus, as we have seen, Weisheit is by no means
to be identified with bare knowledge of the ultimate end. Nor is it to be identified
with mere wish for that end: willing involves "the summoning of all means so far
as they are in our power" (G 394). Third, the highest good is the complete good,
and hence there is no good that lies outside it. These facts make it clear that the
question we are now considering is just whether the effects of a will determined in
its exercise by the conception of the highest good can ever be at odds with that
conception.
Kant's characterization of the will as a causal power is an acknowledgement of
an idea that is involved in our understanding of human action as the practical
employment of reason — the idea that the conception of the object for the sake of
which we act is itself causally efficacious, so that insofar as we realize the object
in or through our action, it is no accident that we do. If we incorporate this idea
into our characterization of the object, we arrive at Kant's definition of an end
(Zweck) as "the object of a concept, so far as the latter is regarded as the cause of
the former (the real ground of its possibility)" (Ki/220; cf. MS 381). In action for
the sake of an end, the conception of the end (which is just the will's representation
of its content, or object) works to cause the end's realization.
The causality at work in human action is therefore that of a conception. But
where such causality is involved, the effect cannot be anything other than the (com-
plete or partial) realization of the object represented by the cause. This fact about
the causality of a conception is a special case of the more general truth that in all
cases of the causality of potentiality or of form the efficacy of the cause does not
extend beyond the actualization of the potentiality or the realization of the form.
Thus powers and dispositions are causes whose efficacy is exhausted by the realiza-

20
That nature is no stepmother to the good will is implied by the postulates of pure practical
reason expounded in the second Critique.
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 33

tion of the content by which they are identified and distinguished from one another.
For although a living being or a physical object always contains a range of causal
power not fully known to us, so that it is not possible for us to place definite limits
in advance on what effects it is capable of producing, a causal power includes
nothing other than that very power itself, and therefore it is not capable of produc-
ing any effect beyond the realization of its content. The instinct of self-preservation,
for example, which Kant includes within the animal constitution of human nature
(MS 420, R 26 [pp. 21—22]), is an impulse to which we attribute only the action,
behavior, and life-functioning that we recognize as preserving our animal being.21
Given, then, that the will is a causal power, the conception of the end involved in
its exercise is just a specific disposition of that power to realize the end it represents,
and its efficacy extends no further than to that realization. So the causal relation
between the conception of an end and the end's realization is an internal one in
that we can say in advance what the conception's effect must be: the will can have
no effect other than the realization of its object.
Therefore, since the good will, as Weisheit, is just the efficacious conception of
the ultimate end as consisting in the highest good, it stands in an internal causal
relation to the realization of that end. Its efficacy consists precisely in the furthering
of the highest good, and therefore it is solely in action that furthers this end that
the presence of the good will can be recognized. And the point here applies not
only to action, but also to its consequences: action expressing a will determined in
its exercise by the conception of the highest good may further the highest good in
some respects yet have certain consequences that are bad (that is, in conflict with
the highest good), but these bad consequences of the action cannot be traced back
to the willing. This is why Kant holds that only the good consequences of such
(meritorious) action can be imputed to the subject (MS 228). Therefore, since effects
of the will cannot be bad except insofar as they conflict with the highest good and
hence with the conception determining the good will's exercise, no bad effects can
issue from the good will. What results from the good will is necessarily good.
From the preceding it can be seen that the two contentions distinguished above
— that the good will is good in itself, and that it can have no bad effects — are by
no means unrelated. Since the inner goodness of the good will amounts to its having
as its object the ultimate end, specified for it by the moral law, and since the good
will can have no effect other than the realization of that object, the second
contention is implicit in the first. And conversely, since the possibility of bad effects
can be precluded only insofar as the will stands in an internal causal relation to the

21
Kant's initial derivation in the Groundwork of a duty prohibiting suicide out of self-love
consists in effect in the assertion that the maxim of such suicide treats the instinct of self-
preservation as a basis for bringing an end of life, and that therefore the attempt to conceive
it as a law of nature - a law according to which the instinct of self-preservation should,
through the sensation (discomfort or pain) by which it functions to further life, produce
in certain circumstances the destruction of life — conflicts with the general truth we are
presently considering (G 421—22).
34 Stephen Engstrom

highest good, which in turn is possible only insofar as the will makes the ultimate
end its own through its determination by, and hence agreement with, the moral
law, and since it is in such agreement that the inner goodness of the good will
consists, the first contention is implicit in the second. Yet though each contention
implies the other, the first is prior to the second in the sense that the truth of the
first is the basis for the truth of the second: it is because the good will is good in
itself that it can have no bad effects.
Given that nature is no stepmother, the good will is capable of producing effects
in the world; and since these effects can only be good, the good will is beneficial.
So even though Kant says that "The good will is good not through what it effects
or accomplishes, not through its fitness for attaining some proposed end: it is good
through its willing alone — that is, good in itself" (G 394), he can still not only
accept but emphatically endorse Socrates' claim that everything good is beneficial.22
What is good is indeed beneficial, but whereas in the case of something that is only
good in a certain relation the goodness of the thing derives from the fact that it
has good effects, in the case of something good in itself the fact that it has good
effects derives from the goodness of the thing itself.
4. The foregoing considerations put us in a position to address a common objec-
tion to Kant's proposition concerning the good will. According to this objection, the
good will is not good without qualification, for in a person who lacks intelligence it
can lead to bad results.23 Good effects cannot be ensured unless the good will
is guided by the practical, deliberative intelligence that finds an adequate specific
conception of how the good will's end may be realized. Such practical intelligence
can be identified, nearly enough, with prudence; for though prudence was pre-
viously said to be directed specifically toward one's own Glückseligkeit, it can —
and in what follows it shall — be conceived more broadly as the rational capacity
to find an adequate specific conception of one's end and of how it may be realized,
be that end one's own Glückseligkeit or some other comprehensive end involving
Glückseligkeit, such as the highest good (see, e. g., MS 433 n).
It is clear from the brief comparison of prudence and the good will provided
above (§ II.3) that this objection cannot be removed by replying that since Kant
identifies the will with practical reason and recognizes prudence to be a rational

22
If that claim is interpreted along the lines intimated above (see note 9).
23
See, for example, Sir David Ross, Kant's Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1954), pp. 10—11. (Ross failed to note that the kernel of a satisfactory reply to his objection
was already to be found in Paton's commentary; see The Categorical Imperative, pp. 40—
41.) This objection is one of the two most commonly raised against Kant's proposition
concerning the good will. The other concerns Kant's denial that Glückseligkeit is an unqual-
ified good. I shall not address this latter objection here, but I consider Kant's reasons for
this denial in "The Concept of the Highest Good in Kant's Moral Theory", Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 52 (1992): 747—80. For a recent general discussion of various
criticisms of Kant's proposition concerning the good will, see Karl Ameriks, "Kant on the
Good Will", in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: Ein kooperativer Kommentar, ed.
Otfried Hoffe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), pp. 45-65.
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 35

capacity, he traces both the good will and prudence back to the same faculty of
reason and thereby indicates that it is not possible to have a good will without also
having prudence. Though Kant does take prudence to be a rational capacity, he
points out that reason's employment in prudence is merely regulative (KrV A800/
B828). This means that reason is unable by itself, from a mere consideration of the
universal concept of Glückseligkeit, to determine what Glückseligkeit specifically
consists in (KpV 25), and hence that prudence essentially involves, in addition to
reason, some other faculty or faculties, whose exercise reason merely supervises.
Kant holds in particular that prudence involves the mental talents of understanding,
wit, and judgment, together with the quality of "sober reflection" — all of which,
we have seen, he contrasts with the good will in the opening paragraphs of Ground-
work I.24 Moreover, the fact that prudence proceeds "from the universal to the
particular" shows that prudence is especially a matter of good judgment, for it is
precisely judgment that "finds out the particular for the universal" (Anth 201, KrV
A132—34/B171—74). Thus, Kant assigns the rules of prudence specifically to the
power of judgment (MS 433 n) and says that judgment is concerned only with
"what is doable, what is fitting, and what is appropriate" (Anth 199). So Kant
himself clearly draws the distinctions on which the objection we are here con-
sidering relies. The objection acknowledges that prudent judgment in a person lack-
ing a good will can contribute to bad and harmful ends, but it insists that the
reverse situation is parallel: a cunning scoundrel can cause much trouble, but so
can a person who is stupid, however well-meaning.
From our previous considerations, however, it can be seen that the parallel is
specious. To the extent that a good will is present, the ultimate end at which the
person of poor judgment aims is the highest good, so though such a person may
be faulted for action that has bad effects — effects that conflict with the highest
good — those effects cannot, for the reasons outlined above, be traced back to the
good will. The criticism can concern only the person's choice of the specific action
that has the bad effects, and it is precisely that choice that owes to poor judgment.
Therefore, when the bad and harmful effects of the chosen action are attributed to
something bad or defective in the cause (that is, in the agent), they must be assigned
to something other than the good will — in this case, to the defect of poor judgment
(and perhaps also to an influence exerted on judgment by the inclinations).
24
Kant says explicitly that wit (which "thinks out the universal for the particular") as well
as judgment is involved in prudence (Anth 204, 201). As for the talent of understanding,
Kant apparently has in mind what he elsewhere calls "sound understanding", which con-
sists in the ability to grasp the rules or concepts that are requisite for common knowledge
and ordinary practical life (see Anth §§ 41—42) — the very concepts that are chiefly em-
ployed in the exercise of prudence. Sober reflection is involved because it is in reflection
that the power of judgment is exercised (20: 211). Since the exercise of judgment in pruden-
tial deliberation depends on a general, indeterminate conception of the end, and since it is
practical reason, the faculty of ends (KpV 58—59), that in its regulative function supplies
that conception, Kant commonly speaks of the reflection involved in prudence as "rational
reflection" (KpV 146-47, KrV A802/B830, R 26n [p. 21], MS 445).
36 Stephen Engstrom

Yet one might wonder at this point whether the good will could not itself be the
source of poor judgment. For there is a certain type of poor judgment that is some-
times thought to accompany the good will and to be intimately associated with it.
This defect, which we may call "simplemindedness", has its basis in a naive candor
and corresponding readiness to place one's trust in others. Persons in whom this
naivete is present are easily taken advantage of, often with bad results for them-
selves and for those who rely on them. Because simplemindedness often accompa-
nies a good disposition, it may appear to be itself directly engendered by the good
will.
But if, as the preceding considerations imply, the fact that simplemindedness can
have effects at odds with the highest good means that it cannot be the result of
good willing, then whatever association there may be between simplemindedness
and a good disposition needs to be accounted for in some other way. And on
reflection it is not difficult to see that the association is traceable to the circum-
stances of moral education. The conditions that best foster the development of the
moral disposition are those of love and trust, but education will not be complete
without an adequate cultivation of the power of judgment, and this depends on
acquiring some familiarity with the ways of the world. If, as sometimes happens,
the conditions of trust are not supplemented with such cultivation, a good disposi-
tion may develop, but the power of judgment will be left unprepared for the circum-
stances of adult life (cf. Anth 132-33, XU335). Thus, as Plato rightly observed,25
although simplemindedness in a youth is a sign of a good disposition, it is a conse-
quence, not of that disposition itself, but rather of the sheltered circumstances in
which it has developed.
It is worth noting that our denial that the good will can be the source of defective
judgment does not prevent us from allowing that the good will can have good
effects upon judgment. It can still be true that through the good will's pursuit of
the highest good the power of judgment will tend to be developed and improved,
and the hindrances to its proper exercise weakened and removed.

IV. Wisdom and prudence

1. Let us turn now to the second question. How well does Kant's characteriza-
tion of Weisheit as the will's harmony with the ultimate end capture our traditional
idea of practical wisdom? It seems clear that it captures something essential, or
even what is most essential. For we are prepared to call wise only those who order
their lives by choices made in accordance with an understanding of what is truly
good and important in life, and this condition is implicit in Kant's idea of the will's
harmony with the ultimate end. But our conception of wisdom seems also to in-

25
Republic 409 a-b.
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 37

elude a further idea, that of the prudent intelligence that enables us to be effective
in the pursuit of good ends.
It must be allowed that, to the extent that it depends on talents of the mind and
qualities of temperament such as those enumerated in the opening paragraph of
Groundwork I, prudent intelligence may not be as essential to wisdom as is the
will's harmony with the ultimate end. For wisdom as traditionally conceived is a
virtue, and therefore it is not simply a gift of nature, but something that lies more
or less within our power to achieve. Thus whereas the opposite of natural intelli-
gence is the natural defect of stupidity (chiefly a deficiency in judgment), the true
opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which (in the sense here intended) is not a defi-
ciency in natural capacity, but an acquired tendency to misuse one's capacities that
seems always to involve a misconception of the end, a misjudgment of what is truly
important in life. Stupidity can be accompanied by foolishness, but it does not
imply it.
Yet while we recognize that one person can be wiser than another even though
the second is gifted with an intelligence superior to that of the first, it still seems
clear that for complete wisdom — wisdom in its full perfection — prudent intelli-
gence is essential. This additional component seems plainly to be included in
Socratic wisdom. Socrates' argument concerning wisdom (especially the version
presented in the Euthydemus) suggests that for him someone with wisdom would
know, not only what the ultimate end is, but also how to achieve it. But since Kant
distinguishes Weisheit from prudence and the talents of the mind, and since he
insists that the good will is good through its willing alone, it appears as though he
thinks that the unqualified good is nothing but a bare determination of the will in
accordance with knowledge of the ultimate end. Kant thus seems to exclude from
the unqualified good the knowledge of how to achieve the ultimate end, and hence
his characterization of Weisheit does not seem to capture our full conception of
wisdom.
2. We may approach this question by returning to the beginning of Ground-
work I and taking note of some details we have so far left unconsidered. A closer
examination of the second paragraph will reveal that the qualities there under dis-
cussion are characterized as having an intimate relation to the will. As was men-
tioned above, commentators often take these qualities to be qualities of tempera-
ment and hence regard them as further gifts of nature. But while it is true that the
main point Kant makes about them — namely, that they have "no inner uncondi-
tioned worth, but always presuppose a good will, which restricts the esteem in
which these qualities are otherwise rightly held and does not allow them to be
regarded as absolutely good" — is no different from his basic point about the gifts
of nature, the fact that he sets them aside for separate discussion might indicate
that he regards them as distinct from all the things given to the will. Indeed, in
introducing them by saying that they "even promote this good will itself and can
much facilitate its work", he suggests that they are more closely associated with
the will than are the gifts. More noteworthy still is his assertion that these qualities
38 Stephen Engstrom

"are not only good in many respects, but seem even to constitute a part of the inner
worth of the person", which suggests that their relation to the will is a distinctively
intimate one. For though the gifts of nature are also said to be good in many
respects, the very fact that they have been included among the things given to the
will implies that they are not being thought of as part of a person's inner worth,
since Kant takes such worth to be a matter of the goodness of the will itself (see
G 435, 454-55).
We can understand how the qualities Kant speaks of can be related to the will
more intimately than are the things given to it if we take them to be its products,
things brought about through the will and its exercise. This way of understanding
the qualities is confirmed by the examples. Kant mentions "moderation in emotions
and passions, self-mastery, and sober reflection", and his passing remark that these
qualities were "unconditionally" praised by the ancients indicates that he is thinking
of the familiar habits or states of soul that the ancients praised as virtues.26 As the
ancients observed, these virtues are not acquired from nature or from fortune; they
come into our possession through our own action. Though nature does enable us
to acquire the virtues by giving us the natural capacities in whose developed perfec-
tion the virtues consist, the perfection itself is something that must be achieved.
While Kant does not himself say that the qualities he mentions are virtues, he does
indicate elsewhere both that they are involved in virtue in general as essential requi-
sites of it, and that we have a positive obligation to secure them for ourselves (MS
407—8). Since the possession of these virtuous qualities is thus an end at which we
ought to aim, they are the sort of perfection of the human being that Kant says
"must be placed in what can be the effect of his deed, not what is mere gift, for
which he must thank nature" (MS 3 86). And as our deed is in turn the effect of
our willing, the virtues are ultimately products of the will itself.
Yet because these products of the will are themselves manifested in action (in the
ways in which the person acts — moderately, reflectively, etc.), they amount to
qualities of the causal power the action expresses. And since that causal power is
just the will itself — the true self (G 457—58, 461) — these qualities are qualities

26
As was noted above, there is some plausibility in Reich's suggestion that Kant is thinking
specifically of temperance, courage, and prudence. The qualities of moderation in emotions
and passions and self-mastery (whose internal relation to virtue in general is asserted at
MS 407—9) might fairly be regarded as jointly constituting the virtues of temperance and
courage, and the quality of sober reflection the virtue of prudence, or at least an essential
ingredient of it (see note 24). As Reich points out, the virtue of justice is notable in its
absence from Kant's list ("Kant and Greek Ethics", 449). Kant's mention of boldness (Mut]
in the opening paragraph as an example of a quality of temperament suggests a distinction
like that drawn by Aristotle between the "natural virtues" and the virtues proper (see
Nicomachean Ethics Vl.xiii), as does his distinction between quality of temperament and
virtue in his discussion of fortitude (Tapferkeit) in the Anthropology (§ 77). The other gifts
of nature mentioned in the opening paragraph might similarly be understood as natural
virtues.
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 39

of the very thing that produces them.27 They are thus a matter of what the will,
the true self, makes of itself, of how it specifically constitutes itself through its own
exercise. Accordingly, they must be understood as belonging to what Kant had in
mind in the opening paragraph when, in contrasting the will with the gifts it is to
use, he spoke in passing of its "peculiar constitution" — what we call character. As
he explains elsewhere, character is the law according to which a causal power is
exercised (KrV A539/B567); but since the will, or practical reason, is distinguished
from other causal powers in that its exercise in accordance with its law consists in
its adopting for itself the conception of that law as its principle of action (G 412),
character in the human being amounts to a "way of thinking" and is a matter of
"what man makes of himself \ and thus is to be contrasted with temperament,
which is a "way of sensing" and a matter of "what nature makes of man" (Anth
285, 292). It is therefore appropriate (as it would be in any case, given that they are
virtues) to designate the qualities under consideration as "qualities of character", as
opposed to qualities of temperament.
Kant's assertion that these qualities "seem even to constitute a part of the inner
worth of the person" is now intelligible. Because such qualities belong to the "pecu-
liar constitution" the will has through its own exercise, they stand in an internal
relation to the will itself. The cold-blooded composure of a scoundrel, Kant says,
"makes him not only much more dangerous, but also in our eyes immediately more
abominable than he would have been taken to be without it": because the cold
blood is a quality that belongs to the scoundrel's very character and as such is itself
a reflection of his bad will, it seems to constitute a part of his inner worth, and
hence it makes the scoundrel himself in our eyes immediately more abominable.28
3. Kant's remark that the qualities under consideration "promote" the good will
and "can much facilitate its work" indicates that their presence as qualities of the
will amounts to an enhancement of the will's efficacy in achieving its end, and this
raises the question of how they are related to prudence. Prudence too seems to be
a quality of character, for it generally grows through practice and experience, as
the will is exercised over time. But so far we have been characterizing prudence in
terms of the perfected deliberative talents of the mind — chiefly good judgment —
that enable one to find an adequate specific conception of how one's end may be
realized. Kant recognizes, however, that this characterization does not capture all

27
Moderation in emotions and passions is of course a quality of the emotions and passions,
and these are distinct from the will. But since this moderation is the immediate effect on
the emotions and passions of the moderating influence of the will (the achievement of self-
mastery), it is not separable from a quality of the will (see MS 407—8).
28
It is presumably because these qualities, though internal to character, are only effects of
the will that Kant says no more than that they seem to constitute a part of the inner worth
of the person, and that the scoundrel's cold blood makes the scoundrel himself in our eyes
immediately more abominable. As effects of the will, these qualities are not strictly speak-
ing the same as the ultimate disposition of the will in which the inner worth of a person
consists (cf. G 435), but are rather expressions or manifestations of it in character.
40 Stephen Engstrom

that is involved in prudence. At one point, for example, he notes (in what appears
to be an expression of agreement with Epicurus) that to "human prudence" there
also belongs "temperance and moderation of the inclinations" (KpV 126; cf. 115),
and elsewhere he indicates that unless we achieve mastery of ourselves by bringing
the emotions and the passions under our control, the emotions (e. g., anger, joy,
sadness) will hinder us from engaging in the rational reflection and judgment that
enables us to respond appropriately to our particular circumstances, and the pas-
sions (e. g., hatred, ambition, avarice) will hinder our reason from keeping the
totality of our true end in view (Anth 251-52, 265-66, MS 407-8). So he evi-
dently regards moderation in emotions and passions and the self-mastery that en-
sures it as necessary for the exercise of sober reflection and for the successful carry-
ing out of its verdict, and conceives of these three qualities together as requisites of
prudence as well as of virtue in general. Let us take it, then, that the qualities under
consideration in the second paragraph, together with good judgment and the other
perfected deliberative talents, all belong to prudence, and that it is by virtue of this
quality of character that the will is effective in achieving its end.
If prudence in general is a quality of character that results from the exercise of
the will, then the prudence resulting from the exercise of the good will is internal
to the peculiar constitution of the good will itself. This means that where the good
will thus comes to include prudence, Weisheit acquires a kind of completeness it
otherwise lacks. For a good will that includes prudence is in harmony with the
ultimate end not only in respect of its being fundamentally determined by the re-
cognition that the ultimate end consists in the highest good, but also in respect of
its capacity to reach a specific conception of how that end is to be pursued in
particular circumstances. It is clear, then, that Weisheit, when completed in the
sense just indicated, is like Socratic wisdom not only in that it involves knowledge
of the ultimate end (as we noted earlier), but also in that it includes the prudence
whereby the ultimate end is specifically conceived and effectively pursued.
Kant's conception of the prudence included in complete Weisheit can be brought
more fully into view by noting that such prudence reaches its perfected form in the
ideal of "simplicity" (Einfalt). Simplicity is achievable only by the wise, and it
consists in the ability to attain the end with economy of means, directly and without
contrivance or circuitous digression; though simplicity when achieved is a matter
of art in that it is attained through practice and experience (and hence is reached
"only late in life"), it is the exact opposite of artificiality and even has the appear-
ance — in accordance with the adage "Perfect art becomes nature again" — of being
a "gift" of nature (Anth 210). It thus resembles and in a sense recovers the "happy
simplicity" (glückliche Einfalt) of common human understanding, which as was
noted above is implicitly wise, and which has more moderate and directly satisfiable
inclinations than does "a cultivated reason" that "concerns itself with the aim of
enjoying life and Glückseligkeit" (G 404, 395—96). But whereas such natural, un-
cultivated simplicity is merely glücklich, that is, subject to fortune and thus, like
all things innocent, something that "does not keep well and is easily misled"
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 41

(G 405), the simplicity achieved in complete Weisheit is a quality of character and

hence generally stable and independent of fortune. The resemblance that this wise
and fully matured prudence bears to the simplicity of nature stems in large part
from the fact that its use of reason is chiefly negative: simplicity attains its end
more through maintaining moderation in the inclinations than through cultivating
skill in the pursuit of their satisfaction, for it involves the recognition that the latter
course is at bottom foolish rather than wise, in that it misconceives the ultimate
end of reason, identifying it with Glückseligkeit rather than the highest good, and
thereby allows itself to fall prey to the further illusion, exposed by Diogenes and
Rousseau, that Glückseligkeit can be achieved by devoting the cultivated employ-
ment of reason to its pursuit (Anth 201, G 395-96, VE 17-18, 28 [pp. 7-8, 17];
cf. KpV 117-18, KU 431-34).29
But the important point for our present purposes is that because the prudence
included in complete Weisheit is itself a quality of Weisheit that is produced by
Weisheit itself, in complete Weisheit the good will and prudence are not externally
juxtaposed: the prudence involved in complete Weisheit belongs to Weisheit — it is
the prudence of Weisheit itself. Therefore Weisheit, thus completed, fits with the
traditional idea that a wise person is effective in achieving the good.
The preceding reflections enable us to elaborate on Kant's statement, cited above,
that "Weisheit theoretically regarded signifies the knowledge of the highest good
and practically the conformity of the will to the highest goodn (KpV 130—31). We
have already seen that Kant identifies virtue with wisdom (MS 405): since virtue
consists in a moral strength that arises through good willing itself, virtue is just the
perfection of the will's conformity to the highest good — that is, perfection in the
"practical" aspect of wisdom. We can now see that a parallel point can be made
about the acquired prudence that belongs to the character of the good will: since
such prudence consists in the specification of the knowledge of the highest good
(that is, in the knowledge of how specifically the highest good is to be pursued)
that arises through the deliberative exercise, in good willing, of the capacities of
understanding (especially judgment), it is just the completion, or perfection, of the
knowledge of the highest good — that is, perfection in the "theoretical" aspect of
wisdom. Virtue and prudence, then, are complementary perfections of the will and
of the understanding that arise from the exercise of the good will; united together,
they constitute the ideal of human wisdom, which the person of good will seeks to
approach.
4. In this paper we have compared Kant's conception of practical wisdom with
the traditional conception only in its manifestation in the passages in Plato that the

29
This is not to say, however, that Kant thinks Glückseligkeit will be achieved merely through
moderating the inclinations (see KU430); he says repeatedly that Glückseligkeit can be
secured only where the practice of virtue is generally established (KrV A809-10/B837-
38, G 438, VE 63 [p. 55]). Simplicity involves moderation in the inclinations because mod-
eration is bound up with virtue, not because it is thought to promote Glückseligkeit.
42 Stephen Engstrom

opening paragraphs of Groundwork I strikingly recall. There is good reason to

think, however, that the general agreement we have found between complete Weis-
heit and Socratic wisdom could be in large measure matched if we were to consider
conceptions of practical wisdom expressed by some of the other important ancient
authors. For there is broad agreement among the ancients that the person of practi-
cal wisdom is one who acts from knowledge of the ultimate end. Aristotle, for
example, distinguishes between cleverness (demotes), which, like Kant's Klugheit,
can be found in the virtuous and the vicious alike, and practical wisdom (phrone-
sis), which is found in the virtuous alone (Nicomachean Ethics Vl.xii 1143bl8—
44bl). Since Aristotle says that practical wisdom does not exist without cleverness
(1144a29), practical wisdom cannot be identified with the good will in general. But
since on the other hand it is not possible to be practically wise without ethical
virtue (1144b31—32), and since it is ethical virtue that correctly determines the end
(1144a8, 1145a5), Aristotelian practical wisdom should be likened, not to bare
prudence, but rather to the prudence of Weisheit.
There are many questions beyond those considered above that might be raised
concerning how Weisheit compares with Socratic wisdom. One important point
of commonality not yet touched on that deserves to be noted is that Kant and
Socrates both hold that wisdom, though ennobling and godlike, depends upon and
even essentially involves a self-knowledge that is humbling in character and hence
something we at least initially tend to avoid and to resist. For Socrates, this self-
knowledge is knowledge of one's ignorance in matters about which one presumed
oneself to have knowledge (a point that his questioning of the slave is meant to
help Meno to recognize: see 84 a—d); for Kant, it is knowledge of a self-deceptive
propensity to evil lying within the human heart (MS 441; cf. 436). In this respect
Kant seems to be closer to Socrates and Plato than to the Stoics, whom he criticizes
for taking the opponent of wisdom to be foolishness (Torheit) rather than vicious-
ness or evil (Bosheit) (R 57—59 [pp. 50—52]); whereas foolishness (as Kant takes
the Stoics to understand it) involves allowing oneself merely from careless impru-
dence to be deceived by inclinations, evil involves se/^-deception.30 Thus for Kant,
30
In denying that foolishness is the opponent of wisdom, Kant is not denying that wisdom
and foolishness are opposed. Weisheit consists in the will's harmony with its ultimate end,
so its opposite is the absence of this harmony, and this is what Kant understands foolishness
in general to be. Foolishness lies in misconceiving the end — in sacrificing what has worth
for the sake of ends that are worthless, or in making a part of one's end into the whole
(MS 465, Anth 210, 266). But if foolishness is also understood to involve no more than the
fault of allowing oneself merely through careless imprudence to be deceived by inclinations,
then it can never be anything more than a mere defect, a lack of Weisheit (R 57 [p. 50]).
The true opponent of Weisheit must be something positive that works in opposition to it
— something really, not merely logically, opposed — and only viciousness or evil is opposed
to Weisheit in this way. Since viciousness involves a misconception of the end, it is also
foolish, though only the person of wisdom and virtue is in a position to regard it as such
(R58 [p. 51]). If the foolishness involves evil in the specific form of the essentially self-
deceptive presumption of one's superiority to others that is characteristically manifested in
the passions (for power, honor, etc.), then it is Narrheit — the folly of vanity or self-conceit,
a kind of self-dupery that makes one susceptible of being duped by others (flatterers, confi-
 Kant's Conception of Practical Wisdom 43

as for Socrates, the true opponent of wisdom lies not in foolishness or in the inclin-
ations, but in a self-deceiving tendency within oneself, and hence the "first com-
mand of all duties to oneself" is "Know thyself9 (MS 441). And like Socrates, Kant
holds that this self-knowledge is "the beginning of all human wisdom" (MS 441):
no other knowledge or quality of character can be a part of wisdom unless this
beginning or first principle is present, and it is only out of this beginning, the good
will, that wisdom can develop toward completion.
There are, of course, further questions that might be raised. One might ask in
particular whether, despite the points of commonality that have been emphasized
above, there are not also significant differences — whether, for example, there is
not an important difference between Kant's conception of the ultimate end as con-
sisting in Glückseligkeit united with virtue and Socrates' conception of the ultimate
end as consisting in eudaimonia-, or whether Socrates' identification of virtue as a
kind of knowledge does not imply that knowingly doing wrong is impossible in a
sense in which Kant would regard it as possible.
But however these questions might be answered, the points of comparison ex-
plored above do allow the following observation. Socrates and Kant both recognize
that the unqualified good can lie only in what makes for the correct use of things.
Socrates infers from this that the unqualified good is wisdom, and Kant follows
Socrates in drawing this inference. But what receives distinctive emphasis in Kant
is the observation that since our use of the powers, capacities, and skill requisite to
achieve the ends we set ourselves consists in the exercise of the will, the unqualified
goodness that Socrates rightly places in wisdom must be a goodness in the will
itself: "[Moral] goodness is the quality of making good and proper use of all these
perfections [sc. the powers, capacities, and skill requisite to achieve our ends].
Moral goodness thus consists in the perfection, not of capacity, but of the will"
(VE 37 [p. 26]). Socrates' argument concerning wisdom can therefore be interpreted
as an argument concerning the good will, and so interpreted it is the starting point
of Kant's ethics.31

dence artists, etc.) (Anth 210-11; see also 203, 205, 272-73, 332, MS 465, VE 253-54
[p. 238]). (Since Narrheit involves vice and self-deception, it is not to be confused with the
naive candor and trust [Treuherzigkeit] present in simplemindedness: see Anth 205.)
31
I thank Michael Hardimon and Jennifer Whiting for helpful comments and an audience at
McGill University for stimulating discussion.