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Kantian Commitments
Kantian Commitments
Essays on Moral Theory and Practice
BA R BA R A H E R M A N
1
1
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Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations of Kant’s Works xiii
Notes on Original Publication xv
PA RT O N E : R E T H I N K I N G KA N T ’ S E T H IC S
1. Reasoning to Obligation 3
2. The Difference That Ends Make 21
3. Making Exceptions 42
4. A Mismatch of Methods 58
5. Kantian Commitments 84
PA RT T WO : E X T E N D I N G T H E B O U N DA R I E S
6. A Habitat for Humanity 103
7. Morality Unbounded 125
8. We Are Not Alone: A Place for Animals in Kant’s Ethics 157
9. Other to Self: Finding Love on the Path to Moral Agency 175
10. Religion and the Highest Good: Speaking to the Heart of
Even the Best of Us 193
References 211
Index 213
Preface
The ten essays collected here represent a series of efforts to rethink many of
the things I took myself to know about Kant’s ethics. Some look again at core
Kantian arguments; some offer readings of less investigated parts of Kant’s
writing; some try to fill out what a Kantian theory should look like in terms
that respond to demands of contemporary moral theory. All connect with a
familiar set of issues in Kant interpretation: what counts as moral reasoning,
the status of human persons as moral agents, how the facts of our being
socially embedded and materially embodied shape our duties. You might
assume these issues were largely settled by now. Perhaps there are remaining
puzzles in the application of the famous categorical imperative procedure, but
we know how it’s supposed to go and certainly what it’s for. And perhaps there
are difficulties in getting the original Kantian ideas to apply to the more social
parts of moral theory, but recent Kant-inspired contractualisms have extended
the theory’s ability to reach beyond the ethics of individuals. And so on. But I
have come to doubt that significant arguments I and others developed con-
nect in the right way to core Kantian commitments, and it is my growing con-
viction that I should be unsettled in what I have taken myself to know that is
the origin of these essays.
The unsettling began in a seminar on Kant’s ethics that included graduate
students who had worked with me for several years, as well as first- and
second-year students who were relatively new to the material. In thinking
how to proceed in a way that would be useful to both groups I decided to try
to present the Groundwork intuitively, as a straightforward way of thinking
about morality, while keeping an eye on the text. The result was the argument
of “Reasoning to Obligation” (Chapter 1). If morality belonged to practical
reason and practical reason was (because it had to be) about reasoning, then
we should be able to find analogs to formal standards of good reasoning—
validity and soundness—on the practical side. And we could, looking at
Kant’s examples, see that what he was arguing was that there were limits to
what could be reasoned to from self-interest, using contradiction-under-
universalization as a validity test. As the essay aims to show, this shift in focus
not only opens interpretive doors, it also resolves a number of old problems
about the categorical imperative tests and moral worth. It also set up a new
viii Preface
way to think about the status of persons as ends-in-themselves, thinking now

of ends as premises for reasoning and taking the next natural step of regard-
ing a reasoner as a final end (not an end-for-something). As argued in “The
Difference That Ends Make” (Chapter 2), this insight unravels some of the
more recalcitrant textual puzzles surrounding the argument for the formula
of humanity and also shows the connection between that formula and the
more fundamental formula of universal law.
To fill out a “good reasoning” story requires that there be true premises.
These are found in the Metaphysics of Morals’ obligatory ends. The result is a
more resilient and flexible Kantian account of moral value and deliberative
requirement, one that is surprisingly sensitive to the complexities of ordinary
human living. “Making Exceptions” (Chapter 3) explores the interesting
consequences of this for Kant’s supposed rigorism. In the two following
essays, “A Mismatch of Methods” and “Kantian Commitments” (Chapters 4
and 5), the “good reasoning” account is tested against competitor hybrid and
contractualist theories that take themselves (mistakenly, I argue) to be
preserving the best of Kant’s insights while adding resources that can manage
hard cases that Kant gets wrong.
While I am confident the arguments of these essays make real advances in
our understanding of Kant’s theory, I am quite sure that they are not the last
word on their topics, not even my last word. I do not find such a state of affairs
troubling: it has been my experience with these texts that they reveal them-
selves slowly and in stages. There is of course their sheer difficulty. And then
there is the need to peel away assumptions we bring to the texts that introduce
questions they were not meant to answer, and assumptions that rule out con-
cepts and ideas central to the moral project as Kant sees it, sometimes block-
ing appreciation of its ambition and scale. So I anticipate still other rounds of
becoming unsettled and rethinking and reassembling the pieces.1
The second half of the collection takes on some new projects. The first bits
of Kant I worked on seriously, as a graduate student, were his historical essays,
especially his curious remarks about how we should resolve the under-
determination of historical narrative in a morally progressive way. The barrier
to understanding these remarks was obvious. How could Kant, who denies a
role to empirical content in the foundation of morals, think there was a need
to adopt a progressive historical narrative? Or that genuine moral progress
1 It is thus no surprise that I now see the essays in Part One as stages on the way to the view of
Kant’s ethics I argue for in The Moral Habitat (2021). The essays are, however, independent of that
study, making their own arguments in response to distinct challenges to, and criticisms of, the Kantian
project.
Preface ix
occurs independent of the agency of good persons? Since Kant wrote the his-
torical essays in the same years as his major ethical works, the interpretive
problem could hardly be ignored. Indeed, it was on my mind for more than
thirty years, a continuing background source of many of the questions
responsible for my going back to rethink basic ideas about Kant’s views of
agency and moral action. At long last, and at the urging of Amélie Rorty,
I wrote “A Habitat for Humanity” (Chapter 6), a partial reading of Kant’s
wonderful “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim.” Taking
that essay seriously, morally and philosophically, was instructive in gaining
insight into Kant’s larger moral scheme (larger, that is, than the foundation
arguments that are the concern of the Groundwork and Critique of Practical
Reason). It also helped settle the question whether Kant’s moral system was
constructed with an eye to accommodating the actual circumstances of per-
sons, as well as offering an idea of how they might be changed for the better
by self-consciously moral agents acting together.
Embedding the moral project in a political setting—as “The Idea for a
Universal History” does, and, when you think about it, as does the
Metaphysics of Morals—raised the question whether and how anything like
the morality-first Kantian account could accommodate the various pluralisms
that currently concern us. “Morality Unbounded” (Chapter 7) takes up this
challenge in Kant-informed if not Kant-specific terms. That these questions
are not at all alien to Kant is evident in his complex negotiation with the
claims of religion.
The last three essays take up topics that are often seen as impediments to
working out a Kantian ethics within the framework he offers. They concern
the moral status of animals, how we are to think naturalistically about moral
development, and Kant’s idea of the highest good. I don’t think it’s a necessary
aspiration to make good on every one of Kant’s texts and arguments; we are
free to move beyond Kant’s limitations, and should do so where he gets things
wrong, or simply can’t see beyond his personal or historical horizon. However,
one of the lessons of my “unsettling project” is that there is a risk in premature
abandonment, and considerable value to be had from engaging with hard
texts as imaginatively as one can.
In that spirit, “We Are Not Alone” (Chapter 8) takes on Kant’s difficult idea
that our duties to animals, though real, are indirect—“duties with respect to”
and not “duties to”—and tries to make sense of why he might think not having
such duties would “uproot a natural disposition” that morality needs. The
interesting puzzle is not why being cruel to animals might lead us to be cruel
more generally, but why not having a duty to animals would change our nature.
x Preface
“Other to Self ” (Chapter 9) argues that we should not hastily agree with
those, like Bernard Williams, who find a natural tension between love and
morality and reason to afford higher value to love when they conflict. There
are reasons to be a bit skeptical about love, and less anxious about the authori-
tative claims morality makes for itself. Things look different when we remem-
ber that the trajectory of our coming to be a moral agent has its first steps in
the dynamics and vicissitudes of early love. Making use of D. W. Winnicott’s
insights about infant and childhood development, I argue that love is not only
in the biography of moral agency, making our relation to “the other” a condi-
tion of our individuality, but also that some of love’s darker moments are
responsible for our moral fragility. In a healthy individual, the capacities for
mature love and moral agency are made to work together.
The final essay of the collection, “Religion and the Highest Good”
(Chapter 10), offers a new approach to an idea about the relation between
virtue and happiness that I find unsettling, through reading a text that is (for
me) very hard to make sense of (hard, but also exhilarating). The idea of the
highest good has a prominent place at the end of the Critique of Practical
Reason, where Kant takes himself to have to show that nothing in his theoret
ical philosophy rules out the possibility of a divinely organized reconciliation
between virtue and happiness. Whatever one thinks of that argument, it should
leave an uncomfortable question about the role of the idea of the highest good
in the conceptual repertoire of a good person. As a source of motivation, it’s
either corrupting or a reason for despair. As an arc for the species, it makes
the individual’s successes and tribulations a mystery. These worries are taken
up in the less studied second and third parts of Religion within the Boundaries
of Mere Reason. Though the texts are difficult, they are revelatory of Kant’s
diagnosis of the moral doubts of even the best persons and the need persons
have for some kind of social framework within which they can confidently act
with others in a morally progressive way.
Over the years of working on this set of essays I have amassed more debts
than I can keep count of. Friends and colleagues at conferences, colloquia, and
in day-to-day conversation have generously responded to and, equally gener-
ously, offered criticisms of different parts of the project. The benefit to me has
been large, and I hope the results collected here pass some of it forward.
In lieu of the long list of the people to whom I owe gratitude, I want to take
this opportunity to express a deeper debt I have to three women whose deaths
this past year cast a long shadow: Ruth Gavison, Amélie Rorty, and Judith
Jarvis Thomson. Each of them, in very different ways and over many, many
years, were there for me, urging and encouraging me to do more than
Preface xi
I thought I could, and, always, freely giving their affection. They have also been,
in their lives and in their work, a profound inspiration. They were bold, never
ordinary, and serious in the best sense. This book is dedicated to their memory.
A note about the texts. Apart from some light editing, I have left most of
the writing unchanged from its original form, with two significant exceptions.
One concerns the first two essays of the collection, both of which were writ-
ten on request to address special topics: the first about Kant and Hegel; the
second, Kant and virtue theory. I used them largely as an occasion to provoke
some new thinking about Kant; what I said about the special topics them-
selves did not seem worth preserving here. The second exception involves
modest changes in the second through fifth essays to make them more readable
together, as a sequence. In their original form, they were parts of a multi-year
project that shared a set of starting points (basic arguments and examples)
that put the “good reasoning” interpretation of “Reasoning to Obligation” to
work in different contexts. Without changing the substance, I have modified
the presentation of arguments and varied the examples so that the essays more
clearly build on one another and reinforce the value of the new interpretation.
Abbreviations of Kant’s Works
References in the text to Kant’s work are to the standard German edition: Kants
gesammelte Schriften: Herausgegeben von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
29 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1902–), and are cited by volume and page number. The
following abbreviations for the titles of Kant’s work will be used throughout this
volume. The list of English translations used or consulted is given in the References.
A Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point

of View)
G Grundlegung zur Metaphysic der Sitten (Groundwork of the Metaphysics
of Morals)
Id Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (Idea for a
Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim)
KdU Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the Power of Judgment)
KpV Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason)
MS Metaphysik der Sitten (Metaphysics of Morals)
R Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen Bloßen Vernunft (Religion within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason)
VE Vorlesung über Ethik (Lectures on Ethics)
Notes on Original Publication
Permission from the publishers to reprint all or parts of these essays is

gratefully acknowledged.
“Reasoning to Obligation,” Inquiry, 49, no. 1, February 2006.
“The Difference That Ends Make,” in Perfecting Virtue: Kantian Ethics and
Virtue Ethics, ed. Julian Wuerth (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
“Making Exceptions,” in the Proceedings of the 11th International Kant
Congress (2013).
“A Mismatch of Methods,” in Derek Parfit, On What Matters, vol. 2, ed.
S. Scheffler (Oxford University Press, 2011).
“Kantian Commitments,” Studi Kantiani, 29, 2016.
“A Habitat for Humanity,” in Kant’s “Idea for a Universal History,” eds.
A. O. Rorty and James Schmidt (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
“Morality Unbounded,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 36, no. 4, 2008.
“We Are Not Alone: A Place for Animals in Kant’s Ethics,” in Kant on Persons
and Agency, ed. Eric Watkins (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
“Other to Self: Finding Love on the Path to Moral Agency,” Amherst Lectures
in Philosophy, 2018.
“Religion and the Highest Good: Speaking to the Heart of Even the Best
of Us” in Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity, ed. Kate Moran (Cambridge
University Press, 2017).
PART ONE
RETHIN KING KA N T ’ S ET H ICS

1
Reasoning to Obligation
In this chapter, I propose to set out an attractive simplification of some basic

elements of Kant’s moral philosophy.1 My focus will be on the familiar idea of
the will as practical reason, but I will emphasize its active mode, as a faculty of
practical reasoning. It is a small shift, but one that resounds. The plan is to
walk through the simplified account, to point out some obvious advantages it
offers for defusing familiar objections, and to indicate some of what would
have to be the case for the account to work. I will not often touch down on
stretches of text; most of what I will be talking about is very well known. What
I say will often be close to what others have said about Kant’s theory, just put
in an unusually literal way; the upshot is significantly different because the
simplification resists psychologizing Kant’s account of moral action and
motivation. That is enough to lay some worn worries to rest and redirect our
attention to more interesting questions.
1. The Basic Picture
Suppose the identification of the will with practical reason amounts to (at
least in part) the claim that in the realm of action and choice (including the
setting of ends) we are to come to action by reasoning appropriately. When
our action follows from correct reasoning we act well. A good will’s good will
ing is then in its correct reasoning about action; this is what it means to say
that its goodness is in its principle. The terminus of practical reasoning or
willing is an intention to act or refrain from acting; the intention is normally
completed in action (unless it is impeded, or there is conflict or weakness
of will).2
1 The original version of this chapter was for a “Kant to Hegel” conference at the University of
Pittsburgh. This chapter presents its (lightly edited) Kantian core.
2 I wrote this chapter using “intention” language as part of an effort to see whether there was an
easy joining of Kantian and contemporary action vocabulary. Over time I have come to believe that
doing this tends to obscure Kant’s distinctive view about action as arising from rationally determined
volition. I don’t think the argument of this chapter is affected by the choice of terms. (Footnote added
in 2021.)
Kantian Commitments: Essays on Moral Theory and Practice. Barbara Herman, Oxford University Press.
© Barbara Herman 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844965.003.0001
4 Rethinking Kant ’ s Ethics
If good willing is a mode of good reasoning, then to understand good will

ing we need to attend to what makes for good reasoning—a matter of getting
it right about premises and about appropriate principles of inference: war
ranted transitions from thought to thought, thought to belief, thought to
intention or choice (or between the propositions or sentences that represent
them). Anything that counts as reasoning will involve that. In the moral case,
it need not be easy to grasp what the appropriate premises and principles are,
only that it is premises and principles of inference that we seek. Later on, I
will make a case that the two obligatory ends identified in the Metaphysics of
Morals determine correct premises. It is not much of a reach to see the prin
ciples of the practical imperatives (however many there are) as the candidate
principles of inference. I think it is obvious that Kant views the principle that
underlies the categorical imperative (especially in its universal law formula)
as the ultimate standard or most basic principle of practical inference: the
principle that sets final terms of validity for the movement of thought from
practical premises to intention to act.
Here’s what reasoning to obligation looks like.3 Someone has given me
something of value to hold for her (a deposit), but she dies before its date of
return. No one else knows I have it. Correct practical reasoning takes me
from some complex evaluative premise about possession to some conclusion
about what is to be done by way of a principle or rule of inference that in its
most abstract form says: “act only on that maxim that can at the same time be
willed a universal law.” When, by contrast, my proposed principle is “to
increase my property by every safe means”—when that is my maxim—then
my reasoning by way of my maxim from the premise of possession to keeping
the deposit involves a contradiction in just the sense that it would if I reasoned
in some way to not q, when I knew that both p, and if p then q, were the case.
A couple of cautionary points. I am assuming that for Kant there is no bar
rier to talking about principles of inference in this broader way: that is, that
we are not restricted to the patterns of reasoning warranted by logical con
nectives, modes ponens, and the like, to what can count as a legitimate prin
ciple of inference. Part of Kant’s purpose in insisting on the possibility of
synthetic a priori judgment is to extend the domain of necessary connection
between cognitions. So, for example, the category of causality warrants our
regarding some temporal sequences as involving cause and effect; we can of
course be wrong about which sequences are properly represented as warrant
ing the causal inference “this so then that,” but we could not even be wrong
3 The example is from the Critique of Practical Reason, 5:27–8.

Reasoning to Obligation 5
unless we were warranted in forming causal hypotheses. Downstream, we will

encounter specific laws—laws of gasses, the laws of thermodynamics, etc.—
which are, ideally, empirically articulated applications of the general a priori
principle. It all gets very complicated as we move into science, but the basic
point—the point that Hume denies and Kant asserts—is that causal reason
ing, reasoning that maps the idea of necessary connection between events, is
possible. Moral reasoning involves a parallel story.
Second, for purposes of laying things out, I will just accept Kant’s basic
claim about the generation of action: that a human rational agent has the dual
capacity for action to be initiated by either inclinations or rational consider
ations. That is, we have the ability to take our inclinations as giving us reasons
to act, and then, with a bit of means-end deliberation, form an appropriate
intention. Or, we can start the chain of reasoning elsewhere—in rational
premises—and decide on the appropriateness of a possible action by attend
ing, as Kant would say, to our maxim’s form, not merely its matter. (We can
also start in inclination and constrain our action by a rational standard. This
is the space where permissible action resides.)
With just this much, for now ignoring what the correct moral premises are
(but assuming there are some), and not worrying about the specific form of
moral inference, we can say some significant things about reasoning to obli
gation. If a good will is a will that acts on or out of correct reasoning about
action, then someone’s finding an action difficult or easy is irrelevant to the
question whether there has been good willing. Similarly, a morally worthy
action is commendable independently of effort or cost, whether it is wel
comed or disliked, simply as it is a dutiful action taken on condition of cor
rect reasoning to it. We may have reasons to admire persons who are able to
be rational in the face of apathy or adversity, but that is a very different kind of
commendation than the judgment of correctness in reasoning to action (we
might equally commend someone who can think clearly about physics in the
midst of distracting noise or lack of sleep). To act “from duty” is then, simply,
to come to do what is morally required as the result of good—i.e., morally
correct—reasoning. An action that merely accords with duty, while the right
thing to do, is arrived at some other way, from reasoning about one’s own
interest, or for the sake of some further end, etc. One gets the right result, but
not for the right reasons.
One might wonder whether or in what way it matters that the reasoning is
easy or difficult. Kant thought the reasoning required of a moral agent was
accessible to the ordinary person (perhaps through the use of deliberative
heuristics, a subject we will return to). Many if not most impediments to
correct deliberation occur prior to reasoning to action in settling which moral

considerations bear and in what way (the killing is not murder but pre-
emptive self-defense; the promise is a lie but the circumstances are excep
tional). But there surely will be difficult cases, where it is hard to figure out
what to do. A first thing to say is that while norms of correct reasoning frame
problem-solving, they are not a problem-solving device. Their good use
depends on practical knowledge. Just as when I want the roof to stop leaking,
while it’s a simple step to the conclusion that it has to be repaired, whether it
needs a patch or to be replaced is not a question this reasoning can answer,
though the right answer will have the instrumentally rational form of leak-
stopping roof-repair. If I don’t already know a lot about roofs, I call for expert
advice. There has to be a place for technical or casuistical expertise in morals
as well as roof-repair. It can make sense to seek advice to clarify the issues we
may be facing, and, sometimes, directly about what to do. But none of this
bears on whether we reason well, given what we know or accept: that is
entirely up to us. To be engaged in moral reasoning at all requires a grasp of
what we would do in terms that fit with the moral norms of reasoning. If we
can be morally obligated, the reasoning cannot be too demanding.
Insofar as one reasons to action in accordance with a moral norm or prin
ciple, there is no extra step of commitment or volition required to get from
maxim to action, nor any further conception of the action as morally required
that is not already present in the reasoning. Correctly reasoning from a prom
ise made, I will keep my promise, other things equal, and I will conceive of
what I do as required by the promise.4 There is also nothing moralistic or
oddly impersonal involved in coming to act in this way when I act to benefit
another “from duty.” Recognizing A’s situation of need as one that makes a
moral claim on me, I act for A’s sake, not for the sake of duty, though I arrive
at the intention to help A by reasoning from a recognition of A’s moral claim.
My intention carries its value source, which inflects what I aim to bring about.
This will show in the urgency with which I act, the costs I am prepared to
bear, and the way I negotiate other moral demands I may have. But it is
entirely separate from affect in acting.
We are now in position to dispose of the vexing pair of issues about the
moral worth of dutiful actions: can actions have moral worth when they are
the product of “good” but nonmoral motives, and must they lack moral worth
if overdetermined by concurrent moral and nonmoral motives? On the good
4 That I may not reason well and so fail to act as I ought does not show that I require an extra step
or bit of reasoning to resist this possibility.
or correct reasoning account, neither issue can properly arise. Consider, first,
the claim that motivation by one of the positive emotions, such as sympathy,
can compete with acting from duty for assignment of moral worth to an
agent’s action. If moral worth signals correct reasoning to a morally required
action, on no account of an emotion as a motive is it a course of reasoning or
even an element of one. Emotions can be important for correct reasoning, but
as sources of information for the premises, or as something that can facilitate
reasoning. The claim on behalf of the emotions is not stronger if an action
arises from a maxim grounded in an emotion (“I make it my principle to act
as sympathy prompts . . .”). If, as Kant clearly holds, both premises and prin
ciple of the maxim must be a priori justified if the reasoning is to be moral
and the willing good, then any emotion-based maxim is disqualified because
it is a maxim with empirical grounds or premises.
The problem about emotions as motives and moral worth will seem acute if
one thinks there is another modular motive—the motive of duty—that plays
an analogous causal role: moving us to act towards an object of moral interest.
If the motive of duty were some kind of attachment to “doing the right thing”
or “doing the right thing because it is the right thing,” then doing that right
thing out of some emotion-based care or concern could seem equally good or
admirable or, as many have thought, better. But “acting from duty” is not act
ing from any such motive of attachment to duty; it is acting or intending from
correct reasoning. There may be, as Kant allows, all sorts of reasons to value
acting from certain emotions; but assigning moral worth to actions “from
feeling” is to make a category mistake.
It is then easy to understand the further claim that a maxim of duty—a
maxim that expresses a course of moral reasoning about action—has a differ
ent content than a maxim that arises from emotion, or a course of (e.g.,
instrumental) reasoning prompted by emotion. This is the point Kant makes
about sympathy and the inclination to honor: no maxim of acting from either
has moral content because the reasoning to action they support is not moral
reasoning—neither premises nor principle of inference are moral.5 (One
might act from sympathy or honor on condition that one’s actions were per
missible. That the condition on action is a moral one does not make the inten
tion a moral intention.) When we think of the philanthropic man whose
mind is clouded over by grief, who is able nonetheless to be beneficent from
duty, or the person of cold temperament who acts from duty, we are to think
5 Kant remarks in the Anthropology (A 7:253) that sympathy and honor can guide us provisionally:
that is “until reason achieve[s] the necessary strength.”
of someone reasoning well, of getting something right for the right reasons, in
less than optimal conditions. This is not an especially moral virtue, though
moral virtue depends on it. In any of the domains where getting something
right for the right reasons matters, we are often impressed when someone
reasons well in a direction not supported by, or opposed by, her interests or
feeling.
Now, about overdetermination of action by concurrent motives. Is it
inappropriate or less good, less morally worthy, to act from duty and sym
pathy? Again, this is a problem that should not have seemed difficult to
resolve. If we are focused on the overdetermination of an action qua event, we
will tend to see the action as coming about in more than one way, as the pos
sible effect of more than one cause; it then seems natural to ask, “Which
motive, which cause, is the cause?” In response to the question put this way, I
once argued that the cause is the motive in whose terms the agent conceives
of what she does, or the one that she is committed to acting on.6 So long as it
is “morality that guides his will,” the agent’s action has moral worth. However,
if the concurrent motives in question are competing modes of concern, or
even just competing causes, it can seem difficult to assign just one of them
authority in one’s action. There then seems to be required something like a
higher-order motive to make the motive of duty the motive that matters. But
then why assign moral worth to the primary motive of duty in circumstances
of overdetermination when it is the second-order motive that is, so to speak,
getting it right for the agent—if it is the motive in control? Apart from this
not being Kant’s view, it is also not a very good strategy of argument, given
familiar problems about the iteration of overdetermination at the higher level.
One could, and I did, insist that without appeal to second-order anything, it is
intelligible that we have multiple motives active in us and yet not act on some
of them in the instance. Though an action may be in our interest, even one we
would take for our interest were the circumstances different, as things are, we
sometimes want to insist that we are moved to action by a different motive.
Some might speak of commitment, integrity, endorsement. Or we might talk
about how we would be guided in certain counterfactual situations. Neither is
a comfortable answer.
But if moral worth marks good willing as good reasoning, and the upshot
of good reasoning is an intention (as willed: not separate from the maxim),
then in circumstances where there is a motive of a different sort sufficient to
bring about the required action, that motive yields a different intention
6 Cf. Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (1993), 9–10.

(as willed: intentions getting their content from the motivational source or
reasoning that leads to them7). And if it is a different intention there is no
overdetermination problem. That one action can realize multiple aims does
not make it murky whether I act with the moral intention that results from
good reasoning. The authority of the moral intention comes with the reason
ing that supports it: that is, it is part of the content of the reasoning in the
moral case that if an action is by this reasoning required, then one sees it as
required, and to-be-done independent of this or that contending or cooperat
ing motive. That in some sense one could have acted contrary to the dictates
of good reasoning does not impugn the authority of good reasoning or its
effect—one’s intention (volition)—when one reasons well.
This point is not peculiar to the moral case. Evidence for or against some
empirical proposition p is not in competition with the utility of believing that
p. Perhaps my sympathy for you, or my desire for your friendship, makes me
want to believe that though you caused harm, you meant well; it was just an
accident. When I investigate, I find that the evidence clearly points away from
a deliberate doing. I am pleased by that outcome. But if I have fairly evaluated
the evidence—if I have reasoned well—then the fact that I come to believe
in the right way what I want to believe anyway does not impugn my warrant
for the belief. Counterfactual possibilities about what would have happened
had desire and reasoning come apart may say something about me, about my
epistemic virtue, perhaps, but nothing about how I reasoned when, as it hap
pened, I reasoned well.
Likewise, my willingness to cheat in some competitive activity does not
imply that when I do not—maybe I’m just better than everyone else—that I
didn’t fairly gain my victory. Norms of practices and games prohibit behav
iors, not long-range conditional intentions. In general, openness to civil- or
norm-disobedience does not undermine the quality of one’s lawful actions.8
What distinguishes morality on the good reasoning model from other norm-
governed activities is that the willingness not to follow the rules for the sake
of some actual or possible purpose is proscribed by the rules themselves. Not
because there is a meta-rule in morality, but because the (moral) rule of good
reasoning is authoritative in the domain it governs, and the domain in ques
tion is all of intentional action.
7 A Kantian variant of Anscombe’s “why” question.

8 Unless the conditional commitment alters the agent’s reasoning-to-action; then she will be
engaged in a different activity: doing what’s right so long as . . .
2. Refinements
In focusing on the interpretive issues surrounding the companion ideas of

good willing and acting from duty, we have in effect been closing in on Kant’s
notion of “motive”—especially the possible determination of our will inde
pendent of sensory impulses (of “desire in the narrow sense”) and by reason.
The natural next step is to take a closer look at the elements involved in cor
rect reasoning and the powers of agency necessary to support them.
If we consider the agent’s maxim, which represents her reasoning to action,
the elements represented are a possible action related to an agent’s end, and a
motivating ground that gives the agent’s conception of the end’s value. The
relation between action and end is either instrumental or constitutive; the
relation between end and motive is explanatory, and, ideally, also rationally
justifying. Since the motivating ground provides the evaluative content of the
maxim—the respect in which the agent sees the action-end pair as good (and
so to be realized)—it must be an element of the agent’s practical reasoning,
either as a premise or in the principle(s) of inference (or both). In good will
ing both premises and the rule of inference are a priori rational; it then must
be possible for the motivating ground to be a priori rational too. But if, as
Kant maintains, the principle of pure practical reason fully determines good
willing, it must then in some sense provide both the principle of inference
and the necessary practical premises. This is possible if (and only if) the prin
ciple of pure practical reason is the constitutive principle or law of our power
of free—that is, not empirically determined—choice. And, for Kant, it is.
It is a further and essential fact that the role of the principle is not limited
to moral action; the same principle is also constitutive of our most basic
evaluative ability: to make and respond to comparative judgments.9 A com
parative judgment is not just a matter of liking one thing more than another—
animals do that—but of judging one thing better than another on some
rational ground and being determined to action by way of that judgment
(determined, not caused). The development of our general ability to make
evaluative judgments, and so also of our ability to reason from what we judge
good or better to action, is a process as natural in us as our coming to see the
world in causal terms.10 What can be misleading is that we don’t start our
evaluative lives with a complete concept of the rational grounds of choice;
9 Cf. Religion 6:26–8 and Kant’s 1786 essay, “Conjectural Beginning of Human History.”
10 “Only in some cases does he [the human being] lack the power of free choice, e.g., in the most
tender childhood, or when he is insane, and in deep sadness . . . .” (Lectures on Metaphysics 28:255).
rational abilities not only can but must be able to inform cognition without
our having a full or reflective grasp of their constitutive principles. Part of the
normal work of human cognitive development is gaining more explicit and
fuller understanding of concepts already at work in our experience.
Drawing on an analogy to the categories of experience, we should say that
the principle or law of practical reason—the a priori concept of the rational
will—is the possibility condition of all evaluative practical judgment (and so
all choice for a reason). Its role is not to fully determine what we judge good
or bad, but to make it the case that our judgments are evaluative judgments—
that they have a certain form, and so are answerable to formal standards.
So even though the initial mode of evaluative judgment is comparative, it
would be a mistake to regard “better than” as any kind of primitive, or as
pointing to an independent evaluative norm. It is to be understood as a par
tial representation of, as well as a developmentally early step in acquiring
access to, the full concept of the good (that is, the concept of the object of the
law-constituted will). “Better than” points beyond itself, though in an indeter
minate way. In its formal function, the partial representation makes possible
the ordered structure of preferences necessary for an idea of happiness, as
well as the proto-moral intuitions and responses that characterize our early
relationships with others (judging something better, we become sensitive to
infringements on choice; a bit later, when comparison involves others, we are
concerned about unfairness and inequality). When conjoined with other
developmental pressures to put order in desire-satisfaction—e.g., to accom
modate our awareness of the extended temporal horizon of a life—we are
drawn towards more complex evaluations and to the acquisition of various
skills of reflection and self-management. And as we become aware of the
extension of our evaluative and practical abilities, our effective power of
choice is transformed. The process is only completed when the agent takes on
the standard of judgment provided by the moral law. Ideally, from the point of
view of practical reason, a healthy agent will have an integrated conception
of the good, one that subordinates her concern for happiness to the authority
of the fundamental law of (her own) practical reasoning.11
Our next step is to integrate these elements of the account of rational
agency into the basic moral story. We start with the evaluative capacities that
structure our apprehension of actions and objects of action under rational
concept(s) that determine choice. In so apprehending actions and objects, we
11 Because it is the concern that is subordinated, it remains an open question what the effect on the
pursuit of happiness will be.
value them. As with other basic conceptual tasks, the tools that make them
possible are not neutral about their own proper use: that is, we do not have
ultimate discretion about how we evaluate objects and ways of acting; there
are standards. Of course, given the nature of our evaluative capacities, their
dependence on other capacities, and our less than complete grasp of their
principle, we go wrong in matters of value in various ways. We can err because
we fail to judge particulars correctly, but we can also mislead ourselves about
their evaluative valence: we can be biased in our appreciation of options or
costs; we can miss or discount information we don’t want to consider. In all
such cases we exercise rational choice (that is why we are rightly held respon
sible for what we do), but exercise alone does not imply success in reasoning
or willing well.
In the normal case, relatively general judgments of value provide evaluative
premises of practical reasoning. We think: this is a kind of thing worth hav
ing, that good to avoid; we reason from the evaluative premise to an intention
to act, according to a principle of practical inference.12 Because the same
(material) end can be represented in different ways—merely as an object of
desire, as an object judged more important than others, as an object of desire
whose pursuit is subject to moral constraint, or as an object of moral
requirement—agents who appear to have the same end will reason from dif
ferent premises (though not necessarily to different actions). How an agent
reasons is typically signaled by her apprehension of the evaluative content of
her premise—in what sense she regards the object of her action as good.
It is natural to interpret Kant as holding that when agents reason in these
different ways, they follow different practical principles—instrumental, pru
dential, or moral. This is misleading. Despite talk of hypothetical imperatives,
there is no distinct principle of this sort—that is, one that applies to and is not
implied by willing an end. There are actions or intentions (really, volitions) to
which we are committed in adopting an end, but not because of a separate
principle of practical inference. In adopting an end, we already conceive of
ourselves as its proximate or at least initiating instrumental cause; questions
that remain are technical, about the details of effective action. This aspect of
practical rationality is thus not exhibited in reasoning from ends, but in satis
fying the conditions of end adoption. Having adopted an end, any end, our
practical reasoning has instrumental form—that is, it goes from an end-related
premise to an intention to act (to promote or act with respect to the end).
12 We don’t, of course, usually perform these operations explicitly; but we don’t need to in order for
this to be an accurate representation or model of the process we use.
There may seem to be a better case for the principle of prudence as a separ
ate practical principle. The mark of an independent principle is that it is
directive independently of the specific ends we adopt. Since each of us is
motivated to shape our life such that it will be, as best we can manage it, an
object of satisfaction, once we form an idea of our happiness and make it our
end, we get reasons both to do things and to adopt ends. But this is not the
kind of separateness that marks an independent principle. First, it is nothing
about the end of happiness that gives us reason to adopt any end; it is simply
that we have a complex end, requiring subordinate ends as means.13 And sec
ond, insofar as there are distinctive counsels of prudence, they are no more
than empirical generalizations about how best to form and pursue an idea of
happiness.
The status of the principle of practical inference in the moral case is
delicate—it is in one sense separate, not implied by our willing anything in
particular, but it also cannot be independent of our will. As a possibility con
dition of the moral law, the connection of “the deed with the will” has to be a
priori. There must therefore be, Kant argues, “a practical proposition that
does not derive the volition of an action analytically from another volition
already presupposed (for we have no such perfect will), but connects it imme
diately with the concept of the will of a rational being as something that is not
contained in it” (G 4:420n). That is, a principle of practical reasoning can
show an intention (or volition) necessary (“derive” it), not from a presup
posed willed end, but from something about the nature of our rational will.
Although the metaphysics of this claim is difficult, what is claimed fits nicely
with the basic view I am presenting. There is one, and only one, principle of
valid practical reasoning that can take us all the way from premises (ends) of
whatever sort to intentions to act.14
If an a priori principle of willing is “immediately” connected to the concept
of the will of a rational being, then conformity to the principle is essential to
rational willing.15 Then to say of a maxim, or volition, that it cannot be
derived from the concept of the will of a rational being is at least to say that it
is in some way inconsistent with the a priori principle of rational willing. So if
one erroneously supposed that one’s maxim was consistent with the a priori
13 One might argue that happiness is formally the end of our ends, and so distinctive. But in that
sense it is also indeterminate, or empty.
14 So, again, a technically correct means-end maxim is not on that account valid as a stretch of
practical reasoning.
15 One would say something like this of any norm-constituted activity—its concept must be repre
sented by a principle for action.
principle—that it was (in conformity with) a valid principle of rational

willing—methods of good reasoning ought to be able to show a contradiction.
For reasons we don’t need to go into here, Kant holds that we cannot follow
this direction, lacking a cognition of the a priori principle adequate to apply it
(this is in the argument “Of the Typic of Pure Practical Reason” (KpV
5:67–70)). But we are not without resources.
The task is assigned to the two tests of the formula of the law of nature in
the Groundwork. By showing that a given maxim lacks the form of a possible
law of (human rational) nature, they show a fortiori that it is inconsistent with
the a priori principle of rational willing. We can think of the tests as the moral
analogue of truth trees, a heuristic for a priori rational inference. If the heur
istic is valid, in using it one is reasoning as one should. So while we cannot tell
which principles are the principles that all rational wills could rationally will,
we can show that some principles could not be rationally willed (e.g., a maxim
whose instrumental success noncontingently depends on its not being willed
by all). More precisely, the tests are a device of representation, a projection of
the bare idea of universal form in reasoning into a modality we can employ.
In speaking of a projection, I have in mind literal projections, like maps. We
cannot get around the city carrying a three-dimensional model of the city, but
we can with an abstract two-dimensional map. Using the map we judge accur
ately about how to get from here to there, though not about what we’ll see
when we get there. I take the idea of using a law of nature as a heuristic to be
just such a projection. Thinking about what cannot be or be willed a law of
(rational) nature allows us to say if a principle of volition could not be derived
from an a priori law of reason.
If the formula of the law of nature is a heuristic in this sense, we should
expect it to contain elements that are not present in the thing it represents,
and to lack elements that the thing represented has. So it will be no objection
at all if the argument-forms inside the projection use, for example, prudential
or instrumental practical considerations within the conditions of the device
of representation. It is what we should expect. In trying to work out what fol
lows from the bare idea of a universal law of reason, the materials we have to
work with are laws of nature, including our psychology, and empirical modes
of practical reasoning. The two tests allow us to manipulate material that we
know how to think about to produce conclusions that apply in a domain we
cannot think about directly.16 Whether the law of nature tests are an accurate
16 Rawls’ Original Position is in just this sense a device of representation: self-interested reasoning
behind the veil of ignorance provides a representation of fairness. In this, Rawls follows Kant.
device of representation is another matter. My purpose here is only to explain

the kind of thing they are intended to be such that they could aid us in moral
judgment.
It is important to emphasize that even though the formula of the law of
nature is a projection of the a priori principle of rational willing, because of
the limits of what it can show, conformity to its standard is only a necessary
condition of good willing. Maxims it allows can fail to have a moral premise
(this is to say: permissibility is not sufficient for good willing). We will return
to this.
Having connected ideas of evaluation with an a priori principle and a
method of judgment, we can put another set of chronic questions to rest.
When we think of practical cognition as choice under some evaluative con
cept, given the possibility of knowingly contra-moral choice, it seems hard to
show that the way we cognize or choose—our actual standard of choice—is,
contrary to appearances, not up to us. It can look as though we need an add
itional principle or an act of endorsement to secure the adoption of the moral
law as authoritative “for me,” for each individual. But there cannot be such an
act of principled choosing (there are no terms of choice for it), nor is any sort
of bare endorsement intelligible.17 But if it is the principle of practical reason
that makes evaluative or practical cognition and so choice possible, it is not a
standard we can do without (or replace with one of our own). Fundamental
powers are normative for their exercise. Natural powers determine their
effects by necessity, but the rational power provides “motive grounds” that
must be interpreted by the agent to play their role in choice. This creates room
for error, and for the appearance of free, contra-moral choice. But we should
not conclude that our permissive psychology can contest the authority of
ability-constitutive rational standards, nor humpty- dumpty like, embrace
falsehood for truth.18
There is also no gap in the application of rational principles, though there
can seem to be one, given different and possibly conflicting objects of choice:
the best means may not be permissible; a moral requirement may be costly in
terms of one’s happiness. This separation is, in the ordinary sense of the term,
practical, or world- driven: circumstances prompting us to separate out
objects of choice under the appearance of different evaluative concepts.
Further, because the same fundamental evaluative concept brings order not
17 Kant will speak in the Religion (R 6:23–5) about a timeless adoption of a most fundamental
maxim, a Gesinnung. As related to choice, this can only be about the constitution of the power that is
the rational will—our will—and from no point of view is that an act at a time.
18 Kant denies that we have a real ability to act contrary to the moral law (MS 6:226–7).
just to our own desires but to the conditions of desire-satisfaction of others—

the good is not my good any more than cause refers to the order of things the
way it seems to me—there will be occasions when not everything one might
permissibly want is normatively speaking available. This doesn’t show that
there is any gap in morality or between morality and the pursuit of happiness.
That I turn out to want what you happen to have is a consequence of limited
material resources or our limits as agents (unless I want what you have
because you have it; then the issue is a moral one). It is because our access to
the concept is through reflection on the conditions of different elements or
moments of our practical experience, the side or aspect of the good present to
judgment and choice is circumstance-sensitive, so both partial (or perspec
tival) and not unified into a whole. Nonetheless, like reason itself, the good is
one. This sets the agent the difficult practical task of bringing what she ini
tially encounters as competing elements of value under a single practical
concept.
The situation can be improved on the theoretical side by philosophical
reflection that provides greater clarity and distinctness to the evaluative con
cepts we have, and on the practical side, by experience that directs us to a
more evaluatively unified life, and by social institutions that make what is
rational for us to do less likely to come apart. Some things we cannot do at all
without the intervention of a system of positive law—e.g., to give possession
the moral status of property; other things can be made easier, as when welfare
institutions assume moral burdens that would overtax our well-being if we
had to act alone. We might go so far as to cast the role of public order or just
ice as supporting a secular version of the Highest Good, in the sense of mak
ing it more likely that good intentions lead to overall successful action. This
would put the state and civil institutions square in the middle of Kant’s moral
story—a conclusion the Kant of the Metaphysics of Morals endorses.
3. Premises
As I have assembled and discussed the elements of the basic story, I have left
to the side the question of the premises from which we correctly reason. We
already have some parts of an account of them. The premises must be a priori
necessary and constituents or aspects of the rational concept of the good, the
object of pure practical reason. The concept of the object of pure practical
reason is the concept of an end—a necessary end of reason in its practical
mode. In the Metaphysics of Morals’ deduction of the basic principle of the
doctrine of virtue (the account of ends that are also duties), Kant directs us to
two obligatory ends, of our own perfection and the happiness of others (MS
6:395). These are to be the premises, or the general form of the premises, of
sound practical reasoning for us. Towards ourselves we have the task of devel
oping and maintaining our rational agency; towards others we are to attend to
the agency-related effects of our actions on their pursuit of happiness. (At the
extreme, making someone’s life too hard or too easy can affect their ability to
sustain or value rational activity.) How we should act, once we have necessary
ends, will be determined in the usual ways: instrumentally and by the moral
rules of good reasoning.19
Articulating our status as ends-in-ourselves, obligatory ends set the funda
mental moral norms of correct regard for the human being, self and other:
that is, they make certain considerations permanently salient in correct
reasoning. If I am considering acting in a way that will deceive you, or cause
you bodily harm, or obstruct your action, or frustrate your reasonable desires,
I may not ignore those features of my action in favor of a more benign
description (as I once put it, they provide us with rules of moral salience).
Whatever else I am doing, both the needs of others and the well-being of my
own agency matter.
Some find the moralization of self-concern troubling. I think it is arguable
that our first duty has to be to ourselves. In any case, we should avoid a foolish
reading of what is involved. An obligatory end of one’s own perfection would
not require that when deciding between going to a concert and spending an
evening with friends I must choose between enjoyment and self- (or other-)
improvement; that would be absurd. But it would imply that if I work so much
that I have no time for friends or pleasures, that I may be neglecting myself in
ways I ought not, or that I have failed to understand the material conditions
of healthy human agency. It may seem strange to think that an erroneous
decision about work versus friendship takes us to the terrain of morally
wrongful choice, but if the wrongful in general marks mistakes of reasoning
with respect to the objective good—about what we ought and ought not do—
it is what we should expect.
Norms of prudence also bear on all of our actions, though their authority
operates in a different way—Kant says assertorically, in the mode of belief.20 If
the action I propose to take is not consistent with elements of my idea of my
19 If reason can determine willing, it must therefore play both roles: setting ends and defining valid
inference. This follows from the second Critique’s “Paradox of Method” (KpV 5:62–3).
20 This fact alone should raise eyebrows in thinking about prudence as a practical norm.
happiness, but I am both able and willing to revise my idea to accommodate

the possible effects of this choice (e.g., I will accept greater risks; I will not
make living in the country a condition of my well-being), then I may act as I
will without violating prudential norms. I cannot just tell myself that I will
accept the risks or costs; the requirement is that I do. It is a requirement of
belief, in the sense of comporting with the evidence, only here in circum
stances where I have some say about what the evidence concerning myself is.
By contrast, once we adopt an end, any end, or are in the business of acting on
ends already adopted, we are under the unconditional authority of the norms
of correct practical reasoning. We cannot adjust the evidence to our ends;21 if
we do not recognize or correctly identify salient features of our circumstances,
we will not reason correctly to action.
To see that reasoning from correct premises is necessary to reasoning mor
ally, consider once again the sympathy example. In circumstances of need, if I
reason to action from a sympathy-grounded premise, I can act effectively, eas
ing pain. But I cannot, from that premise, capture the rest of the normative
conditions that apply. Helping in this case must be an acceptable end—e.g.,
not inappropriately paternalistic; the helping action must be permissible; my
doing the helping must be appropriate; I must do it in the right way, e.g., not
disrespectfully; but also, the possible effect on other ends (of mine, and per
haps of the person helped) has to be taken into account; I must be prepared to
take on the consequences of getting involved, both pragmatic and moral (e.g.,
once one starts, one may not always cease at will). Acting from sympathy does
not engage me with all the moral reasons that bear. Some things can be
brought along piecemeal: I can take permissibility on as a side constraint; I
may learn about the pragmatics of dependence. But because I lack the full
moral conceptualization of the end that fits these circumstances, I cannot rea
son about or around the action correctly; I do not have access to the range of
norms that apply. But they do apply, whether I apprehend them in the
case or not.
This gives us the right answer to another common objection to Kant’s
ethics—that an agent who misses or ignores morally relevant facts will not be
judged to have acted wrongly if the maxim she in fact acts on passes the cat
egorical imperative tests. We are responsible for getting the moral (and mor
ally relevant) facts right by virtue of status and obligatory ends that require
that we attend to what is reasonably obvious and morally salient in their
21 Though we can of course abandon ends in the face of countervailing evidence.

purview (ends direct our attention; obligatory ends demand it). So if someone
is plainly in dire straits and in need of aid, it is a culpable mistake not to regis
ter it.22 It is also a mistake to regard the situation only through the lens of
sympathy. A correct read of the circumstances locates the need as falling
under the duty to aid. That is as much a fact about them as is the injury or
deficit to be remediated in action.
We also get a salutary reminder that logical form is indifferent to content,
but morality is not. So while the form of moral reasoning is universal, the
“matter” of obligation need not be. Nothing in this account requires there to
be just one way to organize the family, or to manage the burdens of need, or
even that there has to be a unique model of promise or respectful address.
Each local obligation-kind is a solution to a general moral problem for per
sons. The challenge is in articulating the premises of moral reasoning, from
the obligatory ends to the status requirements of persons as rational beings.
If, as Kant holds, there are features of our collective situation that generate
threats to our status as free and equal persons that can only be resolved
through the work of civic institutions, there will be a branch of obligation—
our juridical duties—where reasoning to obligation is “up a level,” in the law-
creating acts of legislation and judicial review.23
Although the account of reasoning to obligation I have offered is designed
to explicate the Formula of Universal Law, it helps make sense of the Formula
of Humanity as well. Being constrained by principles of practical reason, or
by any principles of reason, is to have reason (the principle of rational nature)
as an (objective) end. Each of us is in a sense free to think as they will, to wish
for what they desire, but their beliefs and intentions (volitions) are beholden
to the principles of good reasoning: correct premises and valid principles of
inference for cognition and will. On the practical side, to put another in a
position where she will be made to reason from false premises (suppose
because of my deceit), or to subvert an obligatory end (suppose by abandon
ing herself in the face of my coercive threat), is to take one’s preference for an
outcome to have authority over a sound rational process. Our preferences do
22 As with any standard where there is the possibility of negligence, it may be difficult to say
whether the agent is culpably or innocently mistaken.
23 The institution of property is Kant’s lead example. Whoever on their own authority would
remove material from general availability impermissibly imposes their will on all others. If we are to
be able to use the stuff of the world for our own purposes, and we must be able to do that, there needs
to be a collective authority to manage the conditions of exclusion in a manner that is preserving of
freedom and equality. This is the first step in the Rechtlehre’s moral argument for public institutions.
The conditions of authorization play the role of premises in reasoning to juridical obligation.
not give us any such authority. In the next chapter, this idea will provide the
key to understanding what it is for a person to be an “end in itself ” and to
explaining the necessity in our so representing both ourselves and other
persons.
By way of conclusion, let me mark the three things I have tried to do with the
“good reasoning” interpretation of good willing. The first is to de-psychologize
Kant’s view of moral action and motive, freeing the moral theory from a var
iety of old objections, as well as making it cohere better with Kant’s theory of
rational agency.24 Second is to make sense of the negative or eliminative role
of the categorical imperative formula within a full account of sound moral
reasoning. And third to explain why obligatory ends are needed to complete
that account. I take the fact that progress was made on all three fronts to be
evidence that the interpretation has some merit.
24 That is, the motive of duty differs from motives like hunger or pride not just in its object but also
structurally and metaphysically (if it were just the former, its attachment to duty would indeed be
peculiar). The analysis is rationalist through and through, directing us to entertain an account of
agency to match it.
2
The Difference That Ends Make
It is always productive to think about what a moral theory is said to lack when
compared with the competition. Here, specifically, I’m thinking about the
challenge virtue theory poses for the Kantian project. The first contrast one is
likely to encounter between Kant’s moral theory and any virtue theory is that
the first offers an ethics of rules and duties, the second an ethics of character.
The evaluative bias of the contrast is usually asymmetric. Something appeal
ing in the focus on character is sought for (usually in vain) in the Kantian
account of duty. Almost inevitably, the ex ante prizing of the one account has
the effect of distorting the way we understand the other. It helps to keep in
mind that Kant’s idea of good willing is not intended as an account of virtue,
and its companion idea of acting from duty does not translate any sense of
acting for the sake of the noble. Still, among the unintended effects of putting
character first is the minimization of the role that ends play, especially final
ends, as anchors of moral reasoning or deliberation on the Kant side of the
contrast. Rather than delivering moral content, the Kantian final end, or “end
in itself,” is seen as just another part of the formalism. While I do think the
end in itself is a piece of the formalism, the assumption that a formal element
cannot be a source of content is part of the interpretive bias, not a limitation
of Kant’s theory.
In this chapter, I want to answer two related questions from the Kant side
that might make us rethink the terms of the contrast. One is about whether
the “end in itself ” is a final end that has deliberative import. The other is about
human flourishing: whether Kant’s formal account of ends makes a place for
it near the heart of moral theory. Since both answers depend on how we
understand the difficult idea of an end in itself, the center sections of this
chapter provide a close reading of the passages in the Groundwork that intro
duce and defend the idea. But before taking up the main argument, it will be
helpful to say a bit about how unhelpful the rules versus character contrast
really is.
Kantian Commitments: Essays on Moral Theory and Practice. Barbara Herman, Oxford University Press.
© Barbara Herman 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844965.003.0002
Kant of course has a “Doctrine of Virtue” that does some of the work we
expect from a theory of virtue.1 There are clear virtues that a Kantian moral
agent should have; there is a nuanced and insightful, if not fully formed, story
about how moral competence is acquired that is, partly, about the develop
ment of elements of character human beings need if they are to perform
moral actions. This can look like a handmaiden role for virtues of character,
not something integral to the account of morality.
Deeper connections surface in accounts of what is required for moral
action. While it was for a long time thought that Kantian morals were legalis
tic, a matter of fixed and rigid rules of duty, requiring no more of the agent
than conformity, that is no longer the prevailing view. There are duties and
obligations, perfect and imperfect, but they do not subtend actions automat
ically: they depend on deliberation and situation-sensitive judgment. Where
there are rules of action it is because there are regions of moral or social life
where having rules is essential to successful human activity—what counts as
property and wrongful taking, for example. For the same reason Aristotle also
regards the virtue of justice as rule-normed. But perhaps nowadays we do not
think justice is paradigmatically a virtue of character.
It may be true that some parts of morality can’t be captured by rules at all:
they involve something more like know-how (informed habits or dispositions
of recognition), or require sensitivity to the particular. But for all that there
could be in the background, or at the foundation, source principles that pro
vide standards of correctness that bear on action and practice, standards that
serve both to explain and to justify even the not-found-under-a-rule exercise
of know-how or judgment. So much is common to all sorts of rule-governed
activities.
In any case, in thinking about the role of moral rules and principles, one
should be careful not to conflate the forms of practical activity with whatever
it is that gives them authority or justification. Principles (even laws) can be
instantiated in a variety of ways as we move from the structure of some fac
ulty or capacity out to its deployment by a reasoning agent. Some critics of the
Kantian project highlight the fact that high-end experts, virtuosi, champion
chess players, don’t make use of rules: they “see” things immediately, identify
patterns, feel and respond directly to the normative field. I see no reason to
1 This is the Tugendlehre, literally, virtue teaching, the second part of his Metaphysics of Morals.
The Difference That Ends Make 23
doubt they do this. The perceptual field of animals too can be quite sophisti
cated, marking predator and prey, or edge and surface, directly and without
inference (we often achieve through skill and practice a high form of the kind
of competence that animals have by nature).2 Moreover, there is good reason
to want it to be possible for a normal moral agent to make her way seamlessly
through most of her activities: there should be no stress about whether her
promises should be made thoughtfully or kept, whether truthfulness is her
default communicative stance, that violence and deceit are not available as
routine means. When someone falls and we reach out to catch them, there is
nothing we don’t know, nothing we have to deliberate about—we can and do
act directly and confidently. In the “flow” of confident activity we achieve a
melding of cognitive and conative, of intellectual and embodied knowledge.
But we don’t thereby elude the reach of justification or intelligibility, or of
principle. We may have to look at what we do from the outside, as it were (the
way athletes watch tape), in order to explain what we responded to in the cir
cumstances and sometimes even to understand why we reacted the way we
did. Such shifting of perspective is one of the resources of our practical
natures.
Nothing in the Kantian account of morality resists this. The elements that
its analysis uncovers do not map in any simple way onto practice. That my
intentional action involves a maxim, has the form of instrumental rationality,
and is under the constraint of a formal law of rational willing, while true, does
not direct me to an intermediate moment in which I assemble the elements of
a maxim and subject it to any test or deliberative procedure. There will be
occasions where I need to go slowly and carefully, where I do need to assem
ble and deliberate: circumstances may be new to me, or involve unexpected
conflict so that I do not know in advance what to do; I may have acted
inappropriately and need to find a way to repair what I’ve done. That is, some
times things may need to be worked out with precision, in real time; in other
cases, I may need to reflect back on past action, construct a past maxim,
deliberate explicitly about the action I took. But that happens as it does; it’s
not a requirement on an agent’s practice made by the foundational account of
morals or the role of principles that Kantian analysis reveals.
About the idea of a final end and its connection to happiness or human
flourishing, we should divide the issue. First there is the question whether
there is any idea of a deliberatively salient final end in Kant’s theory, and
2 For a very useful discussion, see Tyler Burge, “Disjunctivism and Perceptual Psychology” (2005)
and “Primitive Agency and Natural Norms” (2009).
second, if there is such a final end, whether it connects an idea of human

flourishing with reasoning about what we ought to do. Final-end-anchored
theories are attractive. First off, they render moral action intelligible. There is
something we are acting for, in singular action, or by way of the whole moral
enterprise. Were it true of Kant’s theory, it would bring moral action within a
natural idea of practical reasoning: from ends to actions or intentions (we act
for ends; we reason from them). It would not deny in any way the centrality of
the idea of universal law-giving, but it would open the possibility that law-
giving involves ends. It is one thing to reject a maxim because it lacks a cer
tain form; quite another to think that all there is to moral action is having or
being consistent with that form.
The most familiar kind of end-anchored moral theory is teleological: there
is some end, some good, that sanctioned action is to promote, maybe in a
maximizing way, maybe not. Where an end is scalar, where more is better,
it will be a matter of rationality to maximize; where more is not better—
friendship is a good example of such an end—the correct relation to the end
may instead be to instantiate or promote it, to give it a role in one’s life, shaped
by the non- scalar values it represents. Teleological ends are substantive,
objective, and regulative. Whether they are one or many, they are thought to
play a primary organizing role in a complete human life: that’s part of their
attraction. It would be surprising if we found that Kantian theory is end-
anchored in anything like this way. How the various duties we have are to fit
into a complete life is not thought to be a question the theory taxes itself to
answer. As we’ll see, such a conclusion is hasty, missing a distinction between
ends in the productive sense and ends that introduce order.
That brings us back around to the objective end that occupies a central
place in Kantian theory: rational nature as an end in itself. It has not been easy
to get an accurate picture of the work this end does, either theoretically or
practically, or to set the theoretical and practical roles in the right relation. It
is assumed by many, including many Kantians, that the end’s most important
role is practical, as the anchor of the formula of humanity, a formula they
regard as an independent principle, independent of and more successful than
the formula of universal law in accounting for our duties. There are, I believe,
compelling reasons to doubt that it could be independent. It is true that Kant
says the formula of humanity is closer to intuition, but that doesn’t mean that
we should interpret it intuitively. I will be arguing that we misunderstand the
formula of humanity if we do not first grasp the theoretical role of rational
nature as an end in itself in the Groundwork’s overall argument. When we
understand what that is, the intuitive connection will follow, as will the con
tribution this end makes to the substantive parts of the moral theory, to the
nature of moral action, and to the conception of a life that comes with acting
well. But none of it will be independent of the idea of universal law.
One of the distinguishing marks of a virtue ethics is its inclusion of end-
related motivational considerations in its terms of action assessment. We
should attend not only to what an agent does, but also and sometimes equally
to how she does it. So, promises are to be kept and debts repaid out of a sense of
their being owed; someone at risk is to be rescued and they are to be helped
out of appropriate concern for their injury or their well-being. Part of the point
of a virtue is to orient the agent in the appropriate way to an action: even if
someone acts as is required, she does not act well, she does not exhibit virtue,
unless her motive and her end in acting are also right. By contrast, on the
standard view of Kant, in doing what she ought, the agent has done all that she
ought. If she never acts on a maxim that cannot be willed a universal law with
out contradiction she is square with the moral law. Where she has positive
duties or obligations, there may be questions about when to act or how much
to do, but not about her motive in acting. There is an additional quality of
goodness if she acts dutifully from duty—from the regulative conviction that
her action is required. In so acting, her will is good. But this goes beyond what
morality requires of her, forming a distinct category of agent assessment rela
tively independent of action assessment (something “added on” to a theory of
right action that speaks to the agent’s character, but is different from virtue).
I do not think this separation of action and agent assessment is at the heart
of Kant’s moral theory. There are regions where an external action is judged
on its own (especially in the domain of right), or negatively, where there is
some kind of doing that cannot be countenanced however motivated and for
no matter what purpose. But these are cases where there is an argument for
suspending the standard of moral address for actions. In the central cases of
dutiful action, the requirement is that an agent acts as she ought (I would say
she acts correctly) when her grasp of moral principle or requirement guides
her choice and action. Though it may share external appearance, an action
that arises from sources in the agent indifferent to moral concerns is not a
morally correct action. Its not being contrary to duty is not enough. As we
will see, motives and ends that lead to correct action are reciprocally related
through an agent’s self-conception as an end in herself. This anchoring of
morally correct action in an objective end also succeeds in making the point
of moral action intelligible: doing what a final end should do.
In the discussion to come of the idea of rational nature as an end in itself, I am

going to assume the reader has some familiarity with sections II and III of the
Groundwork. In particular, the idea that imperatives contain rational prin
ciples addressed to the actions of finite rational natures; that the command of
the categorical imperative is independent of agents’ subjective ends (their dif
ferent purposes, or their purposes altogether); and that what the categorical
imperative commands first is that agents’ maxims be consistent with the form
of universal law or of universal law-giving (if I cannot will that my maxim of
action be a universal law—that is, cannot so will it without contradiction—
then it is wrong to act on it). An agent acts well, or correctly, when her maxim
is (or instantiates) a principle of universal form. Kant’s analytic project in
Groundwork II starts with the idea of morality as an unconditional command
and proceeds to the formula of universal law(-giving) as the expression of
what this command must be like if indeed it commands unconditionally. The
famous four examples are offered to show that the principle arrived at through
this analysis can explain familiar duties.
The concept or idea of rational nature as an end in itself is introduced in
the argument structure of Groundwork II to answer a question. Having shown
that if there is a categorical imperative its command is directed at the form of
an agent’s willing, and not its material end, there is then a question about the
volition so constrained. It is a Kantian postulate that ends control volitions:
ends are what volitions descend from, rather like steps in an argument. If a
volition has to have a certain form, it will get that form from a kind of end
that calls for it. So, it is because an agent has an end that she would realize as
an effect of her action—a material end—that her maxim has instrumental
form (and is regulated by the hypothetical imperative). And if the categorical
imperative requires of an agent’s maxim/volition that it have the form of uni
versal law-giving, there must be an end (a kind of end) that is its source. The
first part of Kant’s approach to rational nature as an end in itself sets out the
criteria for such an end; the second part considers what can be said in support
of there being such an end.
The idea behind the initiating question (and so the end-volition postulate)
is familiar. I am driving across town to visit with a friend. The red light at the
intersection signals a constraint on my action, without regard to my end in driving
(setting aside possible practical complexities). Yet in being constrained, in
stopping because the light turns red, I also have an end: typically, obeying traffic
signals, or possibly, acting so as to avoid traffic citations. If I had no such end,
I could not be constrained. Of course the end need not be a further end of my
driving: if I stop because “I obey traffic signals,” then stopping instances that
end (I say “instances” rather than “promotes” to avoid the thought that I am
racking up traffic-obedience points). An end does not always signal a state of
affairs different from and to be produced by an agent’s action. Ends can call
for acting-in-a-way (playing the song softly); they can represent ideals, only
partially or even indirectly expressed through what we do; they can also be or
represent principles (conformity to the letter of the US Constitution as a prin
ciple of judging). We tend to think of the latter kinds of ends as regulative,
where regulative contrasts with to-be-promoted; but strictly speaking, to-be-
promoted ends are regulative, i.e., guiding, as well. The difference is rather
about the nature and authority of the regulation, or the kind of value the end
brings to bear on our willing.
An end that can anchor a categorical imperative that constrains actions and
maxims would have to be an end whose value was neither conditional nor
relative. That is, it could not be an end for the agent only on condition that
something else was her end. If it were, the further end would have authority
over the imperative, which would not then be categorical. Likewise, any ends
that depend on even general empirical facts about the agent (about her sens
ible nature, her sympathy or susceptibility to pleasure and pain) would also
fail as “categorical” anchors; they could at best be a source of practical rules
for creatures with our kind of sensitivity. “Hence the distinction between sub
jective ends, which rest on incentives, and objective ends, which depend on
motives, which hold for every rational being” (G 4:428). What we need is a
source of wholly rational constraint. Kant goes on:
But suppose there were something the existence of which in itself has an
absolute worth, something which as an end it itself could be a ground of
determinate laws; then in it, and in it alone, would lie the ground of a pos
sible categorical imperative, that is, of a practical law. (G 4:428)
Since we already know that the end we are seeking has to be an end whose
value or regulative authority is not for the sake of something else, an end not
dependent on some condition of sensibility (or subjectivity), the end would
have to be one whose value is in itself, an end that, by virtue of its nature, can
provide categorical regulation of volitions—i.e., valid for every rational being.
If the value of an end is both non-relative and unconditional in its require
ment, its value can be said to be absolute, meaning, no end can be regulative
of it (absolute does not here mean of greatest value on some scale). And if it is
something that, in existing, has absolute worth or value, it is not the fact of its
existence that has the value (as if a rare or wondrous thing), but that in exist
ing, in being what it is (viz., a kind of end), it has absolute worth or value.
In response to the criteria for the sought for end, Kant offers “rational
nature as an end in itself.” It is a response that sets off a stream of questions.
Why and how is rational nature an objective end for us (and for all rational
beings, on the very same grounds3)? And how an end in itself? What could
such an end, that is an end in itself and for all rational beings, direct us to do?
Indeed, in what sense could “rational nature” be an end at all?
Some of the questions have ready answers. Something is an end if it, or a
principle that represents it, is regulative for the will of a rational being. It is an
end in itself if it, or its principle of regulation, does not depend on anything
external to it. It is a candidate anchoring end for a categorical imperative if it
is an end in itself and fully authoritative. Now once the criteria are in place, it
verges on obvious that nothing other than rational nature could be the end in
itself. That is, since an end in itself is not an end for the sake of something
else, and it regulates volition without regard to the ends or needs or objects of
our (or any) specific nature, what is left is an end that can regulate volition
with regard toitself: its own nature must be able to serve as a regulative stand
ard for volition.4 Rational nature fills the bill. So, if rational nature supports a
principle for volition—which is to say: if pure reason can be practical—it can
secure the needed categorical or a priori connection between deed and will.5
Now it follows that any regulation of volition that were to flow from rational
nature itself would apply to all rational natures. We could then say that no
volition whose principle was not a possible principle for all rational natures
could be consistent with rational nature as an end in itself. Phrased in the
imperatival mood, we seem very close to the formula that we should act on
3 Kant says of the end sought for that it must be an end for all rational beings, and (equivalently)
that the concept of duty requires that what is a law for our will must be a law for all rational beings
(G 4:425–427). The independence of morality (of morality’s authority) from the special conditions of
human nature thus has two related elements. One concerns practical scope: if lying is wrong, it must
be wrong for any rational being who can lie (G 4:389). The other is about the conditions of applicabil
ity of an unconditional rational principle or law: since such a principle cannot be empirical, and it
applies to us qua rational natures, it must apply to every rational nature.
4 If we think of regulation as a consequence of value, there are other kinds of value to be counted
than that of subjective ends: aesthetic value or beauty, for example. But while beautiful objects are
judged good independent of our subjective interests, their value, their beauty, is relative to human
cognitive faculties.
5 This is the task Kant flags and then postpones when he introduces the formula of universal law: to
show that a deed could be connected with the will “without a presupposed condition from any inclin
ation, a priori and hence necessarily” (G 4:420n).
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Sanders tiesi tämän vallan hyvin, joten hän käytti aikansa ottamalla
selville Carterin murhaajain nimet. Kun hänellä oli ne tiedossaan,
hän meni seitsemänkymmenen mailin päähän viidakkoon poppamies
Kelebin luo, jonka nimi oli tunnettu koko rannikolla Dakarista aina
itäisen Togo-maan rajoille asti.
— Tässä ovat niiden miesten nimet, jotka ovat tehneet minulle

häpeän, sanoi hän, — mutta eritoten Olari, Lukatin kansan päällikkö.
— Tahdon lukea loitsut Olarille, sanoi poppamies, — hyvin pahat

loitsut, ja näille miehille. Maksu on kuusi puntaa.
Sanders antoi rahan ja »pudotti» kaksi viinapulloa ja palasen

oikeaa kangasta. Sitten hän palasi päämajaan.
Eräänä yönä kävi kuiske Lukatin kylän läpi, ja miehet kertoivat

uutista väristen kauhusta ja silmäillen taaksensa.
— Olari, päällikkö, on kirottu!
Olari kuuli uutiset naisiltaan ja tuli majastaan ulos kuunvaloon

kauheasti hourien.
Seuraavana päivänä hän sairastui ja viidentenä päivänä hän oli

vähällä kuolla tuskiin, samoin kuin ne kuusi miestä, jotka olivat
avullisina Carterin tappamisessa. Että he eivät kuolleet, ei ollut
poppamiehen vika, joka selitti matkan hänen ja hänen uhriensa
välillä olevan liian pitkän.
Sanders puolestaan oli tyytyväinen sanoen, että tuskatkin olivat

halpoja ja että hänelle tuottaisi tyydytystä vielä kirjoittaa »finis»
Olarille omalla kädellään.
Viikko tämän jälkeen Abibu, Sandersin paras palvelija, sairastui.
Kuumeesta ei ollut merkkiäkään, mies alkoi vain muuten kuihtua.
Tiedusteltuaan Sanders sai selville, että Abibu oli suututtanut

poppamies Kelebin ja että tohtori oli lähettänyt hänelle
kuolemansanoman.
Sanders vei viisikymmentä hausaa viidakkoon ja haastatteli

poppamiestä.
— Minulla on syytä luulla, sanoi hän, — että sinä et ole taitava

miesten tappamisessa.
— Herra, sanoi Kelebi puolustellen, — minun taikani eivät mene

vuorien yli, muuten Olari ja hänen ystävänsä olisivat kuolleet.
— Olkoon sen laita miten tahansa, sanoi Sanders, — puhun nyt

läheisemmästä taiasta, ja sanon sinulle, että sinä päivänä, jona
Abibu kuolee, minä hirtän sinut.
— Isä, sanoi Kelebi painavasti, — jos niin on, niin Abibu jää
elämään.
Sanders antoi hänelle punnan ja ratsasti takaisin päämajaan

tavaten palvelijansa tervehtymässä.
Kerron tämän palan Sandersin historiaa, koska se on omiaan

kuvaamaan, miten Sanders vietti suurimman osan elämästään ja
koska siten paremmin voi arvostella aseman huvittavuutta jalosuk.
George Tacklen tullessa.
Sanders oli aamiaisella talonsa parvekkeella. Paikaltaan hän näki

puutarhansa kauneuden läpi palan laveaa, henkäilevää, öljymäistä
merta, joka levittäytyi kultaisen auringon polttavan paahteen alla.
Kolmen mailin päässä oli höyrylaiva (vain viisisylisessä vedessä), ja
Sanders tunsi sen kaukoputkellaan Elder Dempster-linjan laivaksi,
joka toi tavallisesti hänen kuukausipostinsa. Kun hänen pöydällään
ei vielä ollut yhtään kirjettä, vaikka laiva oli ollut siellä jo kaksi tuntia,
hän oli kiitollinen, sillä hän oli jo elänyt loppuun sen kaihoisan
elämänosan, jolloin kirjeet ovat iloisia tapahtumia.
Kun ei ollut kirjeitä, ei hän odottanut vieraitakaan, joten jalosuk.

Georgen ilmestyminen puutarhaan oli hämmästyttävä.
George huolittelihe, tarkisti hattunsa ja hankaili tahroja puhtaasta

valkeasta puvustaan ja astui kuistin ylimmälle portaalle.
— Terve! sanoi tulija. — Nimeni on Tackle — George Tackle. —

Hän hymyili, niinkuin liiat sanat olisivat olleet vaarallisia kuulijan
mielenkiinnolle.
Sanders kumarsi (se oli hänelle liiaksi juhlallista). Hän arveli, että
tulija odotti sitä.
— Olen tutkimusmatkalla, jatkoi jalosuk. George. Kuten

epäilemättä olette kuullut, isäni on »Courier»-nimisen sanomalehden
omistaja, joten katsoin parhaaksi tulla katsomaan asiaa itse. En
epäile lainkaan, etteikö koko juttu olisi liioiteltu…
— Odottakaapa, sanoi Sanders, joka hieman aavisti. Luullakseni

olette jonkinlainen sanomalehden kirjeenvaihtaja?
— Juuri.
— Että olette tullut tutkimaan.

— Alkuasukkaiden kohtelua ja sen sellaista, sanoi jalosuk. George
helpottuneena.
— Ja onko alkuasukkaiden kohtelussa jotakin vikaa? kysyi

Sanders makeasti.
Herrasmies otti arvokkaan muodon.
— Tiedätte — sanomalehtikertomukset — lähetyssaarnaajat, hän

nopeasti sanoi hämmästyen joltisestikin todetessaan, että juuri tämä
mies jos kukaan oli vastuussa niistä teoista, joita hän oli tullut
tutkimaan.
— En lue koskaan sanomalehtiä, sanoi Sanders, — ja…
— Tietysti, keskeytti George innokkaasti, — käännämme kaiken

hyvin, mikäli se teitä koskee.
— Kiitoksia paljon! — Sandersin kiitollisuus oli hieman väkinäistä,

mutta hän ojensi kätensä. — No niin, toivotan teille onnea —
kertokaapa, miten pääsette alkuun.
George Tackle oli kuin puulla päähän lyöty.
— Mutta, anteeksi, sanoi hän, — heittäkää pois tuollaiset. Mihin

minä asetun?
— Tännekö?
— Niin, sanokaa, minun arkkuni on rannalla! Minä ajattelin…
— Ajattelitte, että majoitan teidät?
— Niin, ajattelin, että…

— Että kävisin teidän kaulaanne ja toivottaisin teidät
tervetulleeksi?
— Ei juuri, mutta…
— No, sanoi Sanders käärien huolellisesti ruokaliinansa, — en ole

läheskään niin iloinen teidän tulostanne.
— Luulen niin, sanoi hra George rehennellen.
— Koska olette minun vastuullani — vihaan liikaa

vastuunalaisuutta. Pystyttäkää telttanne mihin tahdotte — mutta
minä en osoita teille minkäänlaista vieraanvaraisuutta, niinkuin
näytte toivovan.
— Ilmoitan tästä hallitukselle, sanoi George uhittelevasti.
— Ilmoittakaa siitä minun isoäitini neititädille, sanoi Sanders

kohteliaasti.
Puoli tuntia myöhemmin hän näki jalosuk. George Tacklen

palaavan laivalle, joka oli tuonut hänet Isisi Bassamiin, ja nauroi.
George menee hallitukseen ja saa siellä kokea myrskyn, jonka
rinnalla Saharan samumit ovat Arabian länsituulosia.
Sanders oli sekä hämmästynyt että loukkaantunut. Hänen

alueellaan ei ollut koskaan ollut puhettakaan julmuuksista, ja hän oli
kummissaan, sillä hän ei aavistanut, mitkä huhut olivat tuoneet
»erityiskirjeenvaihtajan» tutkimusmatkoille — olisiko se johtunut
Olarin rankaisemisesta?
— Mene nopeasti laivalle ja vie kirje sille herralle, joka juuri lähti
täältä, sanoi hän palvelijalle ja kiiruhti kirjoittamaan paperilappua:
— Olen pahoillani, kirjoitti hän, — olin Teille melkein raaka —
tietämättä, mitä pahusta täältä haitte. Ylenmääräinen uteliaisuus
kehoittaa minua tarjoamaan Teille asunnon majassani siihen asti,
kunnes saatte tilaisuuden toimittaa tutkimuksenne.
Jalos. George luki tämän tuntien itsetyytyväistä mielihyvää.
— Oikea tapa kohdella näitä miehiä, sanoi hän Elder Dempster-

kapteenille, — on osoittaa heille, ettei olla aivan tyhjästä kotoisin.
Luulen hänen nöyrtyneen.
Elder Dempster-kapteeni, joka tunsi Sandersin, hymyili salaa,

mutta ei puhunut mitään. Toistamiseen erityiskirjeenvaihtajan
matkatavarapaljous sälytettiin hyökyveneeseen, ja hra George
viittasi jäähyväiset laivassa oleville ystävilleen.
Elder Dempster-laivuri, joka nojasi komentosillan kaiteeseen,

katseli mainingeissa nousevaa ja laskevaa venettä.
— Siellä menee mies, joka hakee rettelöitä, sanoi hän, — enkä

ottaisi vastatakseni puolestakaan siitä sopasta, mitä hän keittää.
Onko se siunattu ankkuri ylhäällä, herra Simmons? Puoli vauhtia
eteenpäin, kurssi länsi, herra, mikä onkaan nimenne…
Se oli voittokulku H. J. Georgelle. Kymmenen virkapukuista

poliisimiestä odotti rannalla ottaakseen haltuunsa hänen tavaransa,
ja Sanders tuli puutarhan veräjälle vastaanottamaan häntä.
— Asia on niin… aloitti Sanders kömpelösti, mutta mahtava hra

George viittasi kädellään.
— Antakaa menneiden, sanoi hän, — olla menneinä.

Sanders oli hämmästynyt, mutta enemmän hän hämmästyi, kun
kirjeenvaihtaja ei enää ruvennut puhumaan koko asiasta.
— Koska olen teidän vieraananne, sanoi hra George jalosti, —

tunnen, että on parempi, jos kuulustelen riippumattomia henkilöitä.
Aion mikäli mahdollista koettaa asettua teidän sijaanne, ottaa selvän
kaikista vallinneista olosuhteista…
— Oh, ottakaa ryyppy, sanoi Sanders karkeasti, — väsytätte

minua.
— Katsokaas, sanoi hän myöhemmin, — kysyn teiltä vain kahta

asiaa.
Missä otaksutaan näiden raakuuksien tapahtuneen?
— Lukatin alueella, sanoi H. J. George.
Olari, ajatteli Sanders. — Kuka oli uhri?
— Niitä oli monta, sanoi kirjeenvaihtaja ja otti esiin muistikirjansa.

— Ymmärrätte, että mieluummin olisin keskustelematta kanssanne
tästä asiasta, mutta kuten tahdotte. Hän luki:— Wastambon Efembi.
— Oh! sanoi Sanders, ja hänen kulmansa kohosivat.
— Matsembin Kabindo.
— Herra varjelkoon! sanoi Sanders.
Hra George luki kuusi muuta tapausta, joista jokainen tasoitti

rypyn
Sandersin otsalta.
Kun luetteleminen oli loppunut, sanoi komissaari hitaasti:

— Voin ilmoittaa teille erään asian, joka säästää teiltä paljon
vaivaa.
— Olen sitä mieltä, ettette puhuisi mitään, sanoi hra George

parhaimmalla tuomarintyylillään.
— Sangen hyvä, vastasi Sanders poistuen ja viheltäen päivällistä.
Aterian aikana hän sanoi kirjeenvaihtajalle:
— Tällä asemalla on lukuisia miehiä, jotka ovat minun ystäviäni.

En halua salata teiltä totuutta — täällä on O'Neill, joka palvelee
hausaväessä, tohtori Kennedy, tutkimusjoukkueen päällikkö, ja puoli
tusinaa muita. Ettekö halua kuulustella heitä?
— He ovat teidän ystäviänne?
— Mitä parhaita ystäviä.
— Sitten, sanoi hra George, — lienee parasta, että en näe heitä.
— Kuten haluatte, sanoi Sanders.
Neljän hausan saattamana ja mukanaan viisikymmentä

naapurikylistä pestattua kantajaa hra George painui sisämaahan, ja
Sanders katseli hänen lähtöään.
— En voi tietenkään taata teidän henkeänne, sanoi hän

erottaessa, — ja minun täytyy huomauttaa teille, että hallitus ei
vastaa teille matkan varrella sattuvista vahingoista.
— Ymmärrän, sanoi hra George, — mutta minua ei pelotella. Minä

polveudun…
— Huomaan sen, keskeytti Sanders hänen sukumuistelonsa. —
Mutta viimeinen matkailija, joka 'syötiin' viidakossa, oli d'Argy, ja hän
polveutui Vilhelm Valloittajasta.
Kirjeenvaihtaja valitsi suoran tien Lukatiin ja saapui kolmen päivän

päästä Mfabon kylään, jossa asui kuuluisa poppamies Kelebi.
George pystytti telttansa kylän ulkopuolelle ja meni neljän

hausansa saattamana tervehtimään päällikköä, mikä oli hänen
ensimmäinen erehdyksensä, sillä hänen olisi pitänyt kutsua päällikkö
luokseen; ja jos hän meni jonkun luo, hänen olisi pitänyt mennä
poppamiehen luo, joka oli suurempi mies kuin neljäkymmentä
päällikköä yhteensä.
Jonkin ajan kuluttua hän huomasi kuitenkin istuvansa kyykyllään

maassa poppamiehen majan edessä keskustellen Sierra Leonesta
tuomansa tulkin välityksellä tämän kuuluisan henkilön kanssa.
— Sano hänelle, sanoi George tulkilleen, — että olen suuri

valkoinen päällikkö, jonka sydän vuotaa verta alkuasukkaiden
puolesta.
— Onko komissaari hyvä mies? kysyi George.
Poppamies, muistellen Sandersilta saamaansa kohtelua, sanoi:
— Ei!
— Miksi? kysyi George innokkaasti. — Lyökö hän ihmisiä?
Hän ei vain lyönyt ihmisiä, selitti poppamies avoimesti, vaan oli

tapauksia, että hän poltti heitä elävältä.
— Tämä on vakava syytös, sanoi George pudistaen päätään
varoittavasti, mutta siitä huolimatta hän kirjoitti muistikirjaansa:
»Haastatellut Kelebiä, arvossapidettyä alkuasukastohtoria, joka
kertoo:— Olen koko ikäni asunut tällä alueella enkä ole koskaan
tavannut niin julmaa miestä kuin Sandi (Sanders). Muistan
tapauksen, jolloin hän hukutti miehen; hänen nimensä olen
unohtanut; toisen kerran hän poltti arvokkaan alkuasukkaan elävältä,
kun tämä kieltäytyi opastamasta häntä ja hänen hausojaan metsän
läpi. Muistan myös, miten hän kerran poltti koko kylän aiheuttaen
asukkaille suuren vahingon.
»Alueen koko kansa huokaa hänen ikeensä alla, sillä kerran

toisensa jälkeen hän tulee vaatien rahaa ja viljaa, ja jos hän ei saa,
mitä vaatii, hän pieksää asukkaita, kunnes he huutavat ääneen.»
(Melkein luulen, että tämä oli totta, sillä Sanders ei hevillä saanut
kerätyksi majaveroa, joka oli saatava hallitukselle.)
George pudisti päätään, kun hän lopetti kirjoituksensa.
— Tämä, sanoi hän, — näyttää hyvin pahalta.
Hän pudisti poppamiehen kättä, ja tämä iäkäs villi näytti

hämmästyneeltä ja kysyi jotakin bomongoksi.
— Ettekö paiskaa hänelle jotain, sanoi tulkki.
— Paiskaa hänelle?
— Anna hänelle lahjaa — viinapulloa?
— En suinkaan, sanoi George. — Hän saa olla tyytyväinen siihen,

että hän palvelee ihmisyyttä, että hän auttaa vajonneita ihmisiä.
Poppamies sanoi jotakin, mutta tulkki oli kyllin viisas jättääkseen
sen kääntämättä.
*****
— Miten tutkimukset edistyvät? kysyi hausakapteeni viikkoa

myöhemmin.
— Mikäli minä huomaan, sanoi Sanders, — hän kokoaa sellaista

kuolonsaalisluetteloa, että sen rinnalla suuren ruttoajan luettelot
näyttävät terveyskylpylän ilmoitukselta.
— Missä hän nykyisin on?
— Hän on mennyt Lukatiin, ja minä olen huolissani, — ja Sanders

näyttikin siltä.
Hausakapteeni nyökkäsi, sillä kaikenlaisia tietoja oli tullut

Lukatista. Siellä oli saatu hyvä sato, ja hyvä sato tuo laiskuuden, ja
laiskuus tuo pahat ajatukset. Siellä oli myös tanssittu
paholaistansseja, ja Bokarin alueen hiljaiset miehet, jotka asuvat
Lukatin naapureina, olivat kadottaneet naisia.
— Olen saanut vapaat kädet kukistaa kapinan alueellani, sanoi

Sanders, — ja merkit viittaavat kapinaan. Mitä sanotte?
Ilmoitammeko ja pyydämme apuväkeä, vai luotammeko onneemme?
— Se on teidän niskoillanne, sanoi hausakapteeni, enkä halua

neuvoa teitä. Jos asiat menevät sekaisin, saatte potkut; mutta jos
asia olisi minun, niin menisin kuin ammuttu — tietysti.
— Sataneljäkymmentä miestä, mutisi Sanders.

— Ja kaksi konekivääriä, ehdotti toinen.
— Lähdetään, sanoi Sanders ja puolta tuntia, myöhemmin viesti

kulki hausariveissä, ja Sanders kirjoitti viestiä päällikölleen
kaukaiseen Lagokseen.
*****
George, sanottakoon se, ei ajatellut muuta kuin olevansa

tervetullut
Lukatin kylään.
Päällikkö Olari oli tervehtinyt häntä kohteliaasti ja kertonut hänelle

tarinoita Sandersin raakuudesta — tarinoita, niinkuin George kirjoitti,
»jotka, jos olivat tosia, ovat kuolemanisku brittiläiselle rehellisyydelle
mustissa siirtomaissa».
Mitä tämä oikein tarkoitti, en voi arvata.
George oli kuukauden vieraana Lukatissa. Hän oli ajatellut viipyä

enintään kolme päivää, mutta aina oli ollut syitä hänen
viipymiseensä.
Kerran kantajat karkasivat, toisen kerran tiet eivät olleet turvalliset,

kerran Olari pyysi häntä jäämään näkemään nuorten miesten
tanssia. George ei tietänyt, että hänen nelimiehinen hausajoukkonsa
oli levoton, koska hänen tulkkinsa — samanlainen hullu kuin hän
itsekin ei voinut tulkita ennustuksia. George ei tietänyt sellaisen
tanssin merkitystä, johon ainakin kuusi poppamiestä otti osaa, eikä
sen rappeutuneen majan tarinaa, joka oli kylän laidassa. Jos hän
olisi vaivautunut tutkimaan majaa, hän olisi löytänyt pöydän, tuolin,
vuoteen ja pöydältä raportin, pölyn ja sateen tuhriman, joka alkoi:
»Minulla on kunnia ilmoittaa Teidän Ylhäisyydellenne, että
alkuasukkaat yhä edelleenkin jatkavat toimeliasta ja rauhallista
elämäänsä!»
Sillä, tässä majassa oli elänyt Carter, alikomissaari; ja

alkuasukkaat, joilla on oma käsityksensä kuolemasta, eivät olleet
kajonneet mihinkään.
Kuukausi läheni loppuaan, kun George haistoi isäntänsä äänessä

jonkinlaista julkeutta ja villien kohtelussa jotakin tunkeilevaa.
Tanssit olivat nyt jokaöisiä, ja tahdikas jalkojen töminä, keihäiden

kalistaminen ruokokilpiä vasten ja tanssijain laulun loppumaton melu
pitivät hänet valveilla läpi yön. Sanantuojia tuli Olarin luo päivittäin
hyvin kaukaa, ja kerran hän heräsi keskellä yötä huutoihin. Hän
hyppäsi ylös vuoteestaan ja veti syrjään telttansa oviverhon ja näki
kuutta alastonta naista raahattavan kylän läpi — Bokariin tehdyn
ryöstöretken saalis. Hän pukeutui tuskan ja kauhunhien valuessa
selkää pitkin ja meni päällikön majaan, onneksi ilman tulkkia, sillä se,
mitä päällikkö sanoi, olisi tuottanut hänelle halvauksen.
Aamulla tuon epämiellyttävän tapauksen jälkeen hän marssitti

neljä hausaansa ja vielä saatavissa olevat kantajansa ja valmistautui
matkaan.
— Herra, sanoi Olari, kun vaatimus oli tulkittu, mieluummin

toivoisin sinun jäävän. Maa on täynnä pahoja ihmisiä, ja minulla on
vielä sinulle paljon kertomista Sandin pirullisuudesta. Sitä paitsi,
sanoi päällikkö, tänä yönä on sinun kunniaksesi suuri tanssi.
Hän osoitti kolmea orjaa, jotka pystyttivät suurta paalua keskelle

kylän katua.
— Tämän jälkeen annan sinun mennä, sanoi Olari, — sillä sinä
olet minun isäni ja minun äitini.
Hra George epäröi, kun yhtäkkiä kadun kumpaankin päähän

ilmestyi kuin taikaiskusta kaksikymmentä matkalla nuhrautunutta
hausaa. He seisoivat hetken asennossa, hajaantuivat sivuillepäin, ja
kummankin joukon keskellä kiilsi konekiväärin vesivaippa.
Päällikkö ei sanonut mitään, katsoi vain ensin toiseen suuntaan ja

sitten toiseen, ja hänen ruskeat kasvonsa muuttuivat
likaisenharmaiksi. Sanders asteli hitaasti ryhmää kohti. Hänen
partansa oli ajamaton, hänen pukunsa oli okaitten repimä, kädessä
hänellä oli pitkäpiippuinen pistooli.
— Olari, sanoi hän hiljaa, ja päällikkö astui esiin.
— Luulen, Olari, sanoi Sanders, — että sinä olet ollut päällikkönä

liian kauan.
— Herra, isäni oli päällikkönä ennen minua, ja sitä ennen hänen

isänsä,
Olari sanoi kasvot vääristyneinä.
— Entä Tagondo, minun ystäväni? kysyi Sanders käyttäen

Carterista hänen alkuasukasnimitystään.
— Herra, hän kuoli, sanoi Olari, — hän kuoli mongotautiin — aivan

tautiin.
— Varmaan, sanoi Sanders nyökäyttäen päätään, varmaan sinä

kuolet samaan tautiin.
Olari katseli ympärilleen etsien pakotietä.

Hän näki hra Georgen katsovan toisesta toiseen hämmästyneenä
ja heittäytyi kirjeenvaihtajan jalkoihin.
— Herra, sanoi hän, — pelasta minut tästä miehestä, joka vihaa

minua!
George ymmärsi asian; hänen tulkkinsa sanoi hänelle lopun; ja

kun hausapalvelija ojensi kätensä tarttuakseen päällikköön, hän
työnsi sen pois, sillä hän oli jo unohtanut päällikköä kohtaan
tuntemansa pelon.
— Kuulkaahan, Sanders — sanon, että olette jo rangaissut tätä

raukkaa tarpeeksi!
— Ottakaa tuo mies, kersantti, sanoi Sanders terävästi; ja hausa

tarttui Olariin ja heitti hänet menemään.
— Saatte vastata tästä! karjui jalosuk. George Tackle pyhän vihan

vallassa.
Hän hypähti eteenpäin, mutta hausa tarttui häneen ja pysäytti

hänet.
— Siitä, mitä olette tehnyt, sanoi kirjeenvaihtaja (tämä tapahtui

kuukautta myöhemmin, ja hän oli menossa kotimatkalla olevalle
höyrylaivalle), — saatte vastata!
— Haluan vain huomauttaa teille, sanoi Sanders, että jollen olisi

saapunut viime hetkessä, olisitte te saanut vastata — he olivat
aikeissa uhrata teidät seuraavana yönä. Ettekö nähnyt paalua?
— Se on valhe! sanoi toinen. — Tiedoitan kautta Englannin teidän

töitänne. Teidän alueenne tila on sivistyksen tahra!
*****
— Ei ole epäilemistäkään, sanoi tuomari, joka istui oikeutta

Sandersin jutussa »Courieria» ym. vastaan, että syytetty Tackle
kirjoitti joukon häväiseviä ja herjaavia kirjoituksia, ja minun
nähdäkseni raskauttavin asianhaara jutussa on se, että kun hän oli
menossa tutkimaan Lukatissa vallitsevaa asiaintilaa, hän ei edes
ottanut selvää, missä Lukati oli. Kuten teille on sanottu, arvoisa
lautakunta, on Länsi-Afrikassa kokonaista neljä Lukatia, ja se, jonne
vastaajan piti mennä, oli Togo-maassa. En tiedä, miten hän erehtyi
menemään Britannian Länsi-Afrikan Lukatiin saksalaisen Togo-maan
Lukatin asemesta, mutta osoittaakseen täydellisesti viattoman
brittiläisen viranomaisen syyllisyyttä hän on esiintuonut joukon
todistamattomia väitteitä, joista jokainen on kantajaa häpäisevä,
mutta vielä enemmän häpeällinen sille sanomalehdelle, joka
suuressa tietämättömyydessään julkaisi ne.
Lautakunta tuomitsi Sandersille maksettavaksi

yhdeksäntuhattaseitsemänsataaviisikymmentä puntaa.
TANSSIKIVET
Sankarien tulisi olla kookkaita ja viehättäviä, tulisilmäisiä; Sanders ei

ollut erittäin kookas, hän oli keltakasvoinen ja sitä paitsi
harmaatukkainen. Sankarien tulisi olla jalosukuisia ja täynnä
korulauseita, sillä sellaiset lumoavat naisia, jotka tulevat heidän
näköpiiriinsä; Sanders oli kärsimätön mies, joka kiroili
pienimmästäkin syystä, eikä hän lainkaan sopinut naisille.
Kun joku asettaa miehen valtaistuimelle, vaikka se olisikin vain

lantin arvoinen puujakkara, hän ottaa niskoilleen vastuun, joka
painaa paljon enemmän kuin se henkilökohtainen kunnioitus, jota
hän nauttii teoistaan. Toledossa on suuren kuninkaantekijän hauta,
joka kuninkaantekijä eli tarpeeksi kauan huomatakseen
merkityksettömyytensä. Messinkilevyyn kaiverrettu muistokirjoitus
julistaa kaunopuheisesti elämän ja inhimillisten pyrkimysten viisautta.
PULVIS et NIHIL
sanoo kaiverrus, ja tomu ja tyhjä on kuninkaantekijäin viimeinen

onni.
Sanders oli alkuaikoinaan kuninkaantekijä. Hän oli avullisena

muutamia kukistettaessa, joten hänen hyvityksen lakia seuraten oli
otettava osaa jälleenrakentamistyöhön.
Hän kukisti Esindinin, Matabinin, Tsakin — mainitakseni kolme —

ja avusti ammoisina aikoina Lo Benguelan, Suuren Härän,
kukistamista.
Hän oli epäämättä kuninkaantekijä — voisi lukea selvin kirjaimin:

»Tasavaltalaisuus» siitä hyväntahtoisesta irvistyksestä, jolla hän
heitä teki — mutta ne kuninkaat olivat pieniä — se on brittiläisen
Afrikan-hallinnon tapa: he kukistivat suuret kuninkaat ja asettavat
sijalle useita pieniä, mikä on varmempaa.
Jossakin 12. pohjoisella leveys- ja 0. pituusasteella on maa, joka

on siitä omituinen, että se on englantilainen, ranskalainen,
saksalainen ja italialainen riippuen siitä, mistä kartasta katsotaan.
Sinä aikana, josta kirjoitan, se ei kuulunut kenellekään, vaan sitä

hallitsi Suuren kuninkaan puolesta Mensikilimbili. Suuri kuningas oli
voimakas itsevaltias ja hyvin julma. Hänen alueensa ulottui
»kuunnoususta auringonlaskuun», ja hänellä oli rajaton valta.
Hänellä oli hovi, ja hän istui norsunluisella valtaistuimella pitäen

arvonsa mukaisen leopardinnahan yllä kultaisista ja
helakanpunaisista langoista kudottua vaippaa. Hänellä oli
kolmesataa vaimoa ja neljäkymmentätuhatta sotamiestä, ja hänen
tuttavuutensa valkoisten miesten kanssa alkoi ranskalaisen
lähetyskunnan tullessa, joka lahjoitti hänelle silinterihatun, posetiivin
ja satatuhatta frangia kullassa.
Tämä oli Limbili, Jitingin suuri kuningas.

Eteläisten maiden pikku kuninkaat puhuivat hänestä henkeään
pidättäen, hänen nimeänsä mainittiin kuiskaten kuin jumalaa, hän oli
vallan ja voiman symboli — isisiläiset, jotka itse olivat jommoinenkin
kansa ja sillä kerskailivat, tunnustivat itsensä alemmiksi, kun Jitingin
kuningaskunta mainittiin.
Ranskalaisen lähetyskunnan jälkeen Sanders meni Limbiluun

vieden ystävyyden lahjoja ja hyvän tahdon viestiä.
Kaksi päivää odotettuaan hän sai tietää, että majesteetti halusi

nähdä hänet, ja hänet vietiin kuninkaan eteen.
Kuningas oli vanha mies, siveetön ukko, jos Sanders yleensä oli
luonteentutkija, ja hän osoitti selviä kiukun ja halveksumisen
merkkejä, kun komissaari levitti lahjansa.
— Ja mitä nämä ovat, valkea mies? sanoi kuningas. —

Leikkikaluja naisilleni vai lahjoja pikku päälliköilleni?
— Nämä ovat sinun ylhäisyydellesi, sanoi Sanders hiljaa, —

kansalta, joka ei mittaa ystävyyttä lahjojen kalleuden mukaan.
Kuningas tuhahti nenäänsä.
— Sano, valkea mies, sanoi hän, — oletko vaelluksillasi koskaan

nähnyt yhtä suurta kuningasta kuin minä?
— Herra ja kuningas, sanoi Sanders vilpittömästi, olen nähnyt

suurempia.
Kuningas rypisti kulmiaan, ja häntä ympäröivät pyhät miehet

tuhisivat vihasta.
— Sen valehtelet, sanoi kuningas kylmästi, — sillä ei ole
suurempaa kuningasta kuin minä olen.
— Antakaa valkoisen miehen sanoa, kuka on suurempi, ärähti

eräs vanhempi neuvonantaja, ja kuului hyväksymisen mutinaa.
— Herra, sanoi Sanders katsoen valtaistuimella istuvaa iäkästä

miestä silmiin, — olen nähnyt Lo Benin.
Hän tarkoitti Lo Benguelaa, Matabelen kuningasta.
Kuningas rypisti jälleen ja nyökkäsi.
— Hänestä olen kuullut, sanoi hän, — hän oli suuri kuningas ja

kansojen syöjä — kenet vielä?
— Kuningas, valehteli Sanders, — myös Ketsevaion.
— Humaus kävi läpi joukon, sillä nimi Ketsevaio oli eräs sellainen,
jonka maine kantautui pohjoiseen.
— Mutta valkeita kuninkaita! intti kuningas. — Onko maailmassa

valkeata kuningasta, jonka nimi saa miehet vapisemaan, kun se
mainitaan?
Sanders hymyili sisimmässään, hän tiesi kyllä sellaisen kuninkaan,

mutta hän vastasi, ettei ollut koskaan nähnyt sellaista kuningasta.
— Ja sotajoukko, sanoi kuningas, — oletko koskaan nähnyt

sellaista sotajoukkoa kuin minun?
Ja niin hän kävi läpi koko omaisuutensa; ja Sanders

huomatessaan valheen säästävän hänet selkkauksista valehteli ja

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Kantian Commitments: Essays on

Moral Theory and Practice Barbara

way to think about the status of persons as ends-­in-­themselves, thinking now

A Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point

Permission from the publishers to reprint all or parts of these essays is

RETHIN KING KA N T ’ S ET H ICS

In this chapter, I propose to set out an attractive simplification of some basic

1. The Basic Picture

If good willing is a mode of good reasoning, then to understand good will­

3 The example is from the Critique of Practical Reason, 5:27–8.

unless we were warranted in forming causal hypotheses. Downstream, we will

correct deliberation occur prior to reasoning to action in settling which moral

6 Cf. Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (1993), 9–10.

7 A Kantian variant of Anscombe’s “why” question.

In focusing on the interpretive issues surrounding the companion ideas of

principle—that it was (in conformity with) a valid principle of rational

device of representation is another matter. My purpose here is only to explain

just to our own desires but to the conditions of desire-­satisfaction of others—

happiness, but I am both able and willing to revise my idea to accommodate

21 Though we can of course abandon ends in the face of countervailing evidence.

second, if there is such a final end, whether it connects an idea of human

In the discussion to come of the idea of rational nature as an end in itself, I am

— Tässä ovat niiden miesten nimet, jotka ovat tehneet minulle

— Tahdon lukea loitsut Olarille, sanoi poppamies, — hyvin pahat

Sanders antoi rahan ja »pudotti» kaksi viinapulloa ja palasen

Eräänä yönä kävi kuiske Lukatin kylän läpi, ja miehet kertoivat

— Olari, päällikkö, on kirottu!

Olari kuuli uutiset naisiltaan ja tuli majastaan ulos kuunvaloon

Seuraavana päivänä hän sairastui ja viidentenä päivänä hän oli

Sanders puolestaan oli tyytyväinen sanoen, että tuskatkin olivat

Tiedusteltuaan Sanders sai selville, että Abibu oli suututtanut

Sanders vei viisikymmentä hausaa viidakkoon ja haastatteli

— Minulla on syytä luulla, sanoi hän, — että sinä et ole taitava

— Herra, sanoi Kelebi puolustellen, — minun taikani eivät mene

— Olkoon sen laita miten tahansa, sanoi Sanders, — puhun nyt

Sanders antoi hänelle punnan ja ratsasti takaisin päämajaan

Kerron tämän palan Sandersin historiaa, koska se on omiaan

Sanders oli aamiaisella talonsa parvekkeella. Paikaltaan hän näki

Kun ei ollut kirjeitä, ei hän odottanut vieraitakaan, joten jalosuk.

George huolittelihe, tarkisti hattunsa ja hankaili tahroja puhtaasta

— Terve! sanoi tulija. — Nimeni on Tackle — George Tackle. —

— Olen tutkimusmatkalla, jatkoi jalosuk. George. Kuten

— Odottakaapa, sanoi Sanders, joka hieman aavisti. Luullakseni

— Että olette tullut tutkimaan.

— Ja onko alkuasukkaiden kohtelussa jotakin vikaa? kysyi

Herrasmies otti arvokkaan muodon.

— Tiedätte — sanomalehtikertomukset — lähetyssaarnaajat, hän

— En lue koskaan sanomalehtiä, sanoi Sanders, — ja…

— Tietysti, keskeytti George innokkaasti, — käännämme kaiken

— Kiitoksia paljon! — Sandersin kiitollisuus oli hieman väkinäistä,

George Tackle oli kuin puulla päähän lyöty.

— Mutta, anteeksi, sanoi hän, — heittäkää pois tuollaiset. Mihin

— Niin, sanokaa, minun arkkuni on rannalla! Minä ajattelin…

— Ajattelitte, että majoitan teidät?

— Niin, ajattelin, että…

— No, sanoi Sanders käärien huolellisesti ruokaliinansa, — en ole

— Luulen niin, sanoi hra George rehennellen.

— Koska olette minun vastuullani — vihaan liikaa

— Ilmoitan tästä hallitukselle, sanoi George uhittelevasti.

— Ilmoittakaa siitä minun isoäitini neititädille, sanoi Sanders

Puoli tuntia myöhemmin hän näki jalosuk. George Tacklen

Sanders oli sekä hämmästynyt että loukkaantunut. Hänen

Jalos. George luki tämän tuntien itsetyytyväistä mielihyvää.

way to think about the status of persons as ends-in-themselves, thinking now

If good willing is a mode of good reasoning, then to understand good will

just to our own desires but to the conditions of desire-satisfaction of others—