Herman’s paper offers an interpretation of what Kant means by saying that actions can have moral worth if, and only if, they are done from the motive of duty alone.
There is a question about what Kant means because it is easy to understand what he said in ways that have implausible implications. And we want to know if there is a more sensible way of understanding what he is getting at.
What are the apparent implausible implications? I’m glad you asked!
If he means that the only motivation for doing something is “it’s my duty,” then he is going to rule out almost everything anyone does because most people have a variety of reasons for doing things. Herman calls this the problem of overdetermination. If I want to be honest with you and I also think “it is my duty to be honest,” I have two motivations for telling you the truth. My action is overdetermined because I have multiple reasons for doing it. Does Kant think that telling the truth would have no moral worth since the motive of duty is not my only motive? If so, there would be few cases of genuinely moral behavior since most of us have multiple motivations for the things we do. Maybe that is so! But it would be odd.
Kant seems to hold that “a grudging or resentfully performed dutiful act” is “morally preferable to a similar act done from affection or even pleasure” (Herman 1981, 359). That is hard to swallow.
Herman’s interpretation holds that the motive of duty primarily functions as what she calls a “limiting condition.” For anything you want to do, you are supposed to ask “would doing that be wrong?” The motive of duty is what moves you to ask that question. If the answer is “yes,” the motive of duty is supposed to block you from doing the thing you were considering doing. But if the answer is “no,” then the motive of duty recedes, having already done its job by getting you to ask the question.
If that is what the motive of duty does, then it has to be compatible with your having other motivations. The motive of duty only comes into play when you want to do something; there has to be something else that you want to do for the motive of duty to be relevant.
With this idea in hand, she discusses cases in which the motive of duty is supposed to move you all by itself. And then she goes over Kant’s four examples of action done from duty (rather than conforming with duty) to show how, on her interpretation, what Kant says makes sense.
The problem of overdetermination explained.
Herman develops her interpretation in part by criticizing one offered by another scholar named Richard Henson. We are not going to get into the details of Henson’s interpretation, there is not enough time.
What is important, for our purposes, is the problem that he identifies. He focuses on the case of the sympathetic person. This person does good things for others because he wants to.
For Hume, this is the central case of moral virtue; he calls it benevolence. Kant, however, says something that looks odd. He imagines that the sympathetic person is so deeply depressed that he is no longer takes joy in helping others (or anything else). Kant says that if this person nonetheless “tears himself out of this deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination for the sake of duty alone; then for the first time his action has its genuine moral worth” (Kant, 4:398).
Henson understands Kant as saying that the motive of duty must be the only motive and he builds his interpretation around that assumption. Herman is going to deny the assumption.
This section is about actions done for reasons other than the motive of duty.
Specifically, Herman takes up the two of the four examples Kant gives to distinguish between acting in conformity with duty and acting from duty. She is going to explain what she thinks Kant means when he says that actions motivated by something other than the motive of duty lack moral worth.
Here are the two cases Herman discusses in this section.
The shopkeeper. He is motivated by self-interest to treat his customers fairly. He thinks that he will make the most money that way.
The sympathetic person. This person has what Kant calls an “immediate inclination” to help people, which is a cumbersome way of saying that he wants to do it. Note that “inclination” is not equivalent to self-interest.
The problem in both cases, Herman maintains, is that the person’s motivation does not reliably produce morally good actions.
This is fairly clear in the shopkeeper case. He treats his customers fairly because he thinks it would be bad for business if he had a reputation for cheating them. If he could get away with shady dealing, though, he would (Herman 1981, 363).
What about the sympathetic person? Herman thinks the example of the art thieves shows he faces a similar problem. Suppose the sympathetic person sees someone struggling to carry a heavy box. He will want to help! Now, suppose that the heavy box is full of stolen stuff from the Museum of Fine Arts. He will still want to help, according to Herman, even though that is the wrong thing to do (Herman 1981, 364–65).
I am going to want to talk about that example of the art thieves. I have two questions.
What would Hume say about it?
Is there any kind of motivation that would avoid problems like this?
This is the lesson that Herman draws from her analysis of these cases.
For a motive to be a moral motive, it must provide the agent with an interest in the moral rightness of his actions. And when we say that an action has moral worth, we mean to indicate (at the very least) that the agent acted dutifully from an interest in the rightness of his action: an interest that therefore makes its being a right action the nonaccidental effect of the agent’s concern. (Herman 1981, 366)
This is devoted to Herman’s disagreements with Henson. You can skip it.
This section is about what the motive of duty does when there is no moral duty in play. For example, I am deciding where to go lunch and there is no duty to go to one place rather than the other.
You might think that the motive of duty is irrelevant here. But read on! Herman makes a good argument for its relevance. She will then extend her analysis from these cases to the overdetermination cases, that is, the cases where someone has multiple motives for doing their duty.
Here is the basic idea: “in acting from the motive of duty the agent sets himself to abide by the moral assessment of his proposed actions.” What the motive of duty motivates you to do is commit yourself “to do what you want only if the maxim of your action is judged morally satisfactory” (Herman 1981, 372). (The “maxim of your action” means your intentions or what you are trying to accomplish. Your motives, in other words. Why all the different words? It keeps people like me employed. That’s the best I can do.)
Herman says that the motive of duty functions as what she calls a “limiting condition,” meaning that it sets limits on your other motives (Herman 1981, 373). Another limiting condition is a desire for economy. If I want a new car, the limiting motive of economy says to pick the least expensive one that does what I need a car to do. If I become infatuated with an expensive car that is not significantly better at doing what I need, the limiting motive of economy will rule out my desire to buy it.
If the motive of duty works as a limiting condition, there should not be a problem with overdetermination. That problem, to remind you, was that we often have multiple motivations for doing our duty and Kant appears to say that the motive of duty has to be our only motivation. But if it is a limiting condition, it always works along with other motivations. If this were not so, there would be nothing for it to limit! That would mean that appearances are deceiving and Kant does not actually mean that the motive of duty must be the only motive. Hooray for him!
The motive of duty is a special limiting condition, though, because it can motivate behavior all by itself. “That’s the economical choice” doesn’t lead you to buy something you don’t want. But “that’s the right thing to do” can lead you to do that thing (Herman 1981, 374).
The problem of overdetermination comes up when someone is doing what they are required to do but they have multiple motivations for doing it. In these cases, Herman says, an action has moral worth if it “has as its primary motive the motive of duty” (Herman 1981, 375).
You might ask: “what does primary mean?” I feel your pain. But I think Herman’s point is just that the motive of duty can coexist with other motives. That is enough to make progress on the overdetermination problem; that problem arises because Kant seems to say that the person who does something morally worthy cannot have any motivation to do it other than the motive of duty. If Herman’s interpretation is correct, that is not what he is saying.
That would be awfully good for him.
There is another worry about Kant’s moral philosophy, namely, that since he holds that the good will is so awesome he is committed to thinking people should try to seek out opportunities to act from the motive of duty, a bit like someone might go from “it is honorable to show bravery in battle” to “we should have wars so people can do honorable things.” Herman thinks she has an answer to that. Kant thinks that the motive of duty is ubiquitous since we have to invoke it all the time to make sure that what we want to do is morally allowed. But he does not think that we should try to do dutiful things all of the time (Herman 1981, 376).
In this section, Herman returns to Kant’s four cases and explains how she understands them. This is the most important section; if you are short on time, study this one the most carefully and rely on my summaries for the other parts.
These cases are from the first section of Kant’s Groundwork (4:397-399).
The shopkeeper is honest with his customers (in conformity with his duty) because he thinks it is good for business (and so not from duty, not motivated by duty).
The sympathetic person does good things for others (in conformity with his duty) because he wants to (so not motivated by duty, not from duty).
The non-suicide does not kill himself because he likes being alive. You know the drill.
The prudent person takes care of his future interests because he is concerned for himself. Same.
The most important one is the sympathetic person, so pay special attention to pages 376-78.
In our discussion of the art thieves example, Derek pointed out that Hume would surely say that the artificial virtues would come into play here. He thinks we sympathize with the public good as well as with individuals. That is the basis of his theory of property and property is exactly what the thieves are stealing!
I think you could add that, in general, a sympathetic person will think of the victims of a crime as well as the struggling criminals who need help in carrying out the crime.
In sum, I’m willing to believe that a sympathetic person will sometimes be led astray. That seems likely, in fact. But I do not think this example proves the point.
I also asked whether any motivation would avoid this kind of problem. A person who wants to help others will sometimes help people who do not deserve it. Would a person who wants to do her duty ever have a misfire like that?
Abby cited Singer as a counter-example: you might think it is your duty to give to famine aid and, as a consequence, give so much aid that you wipe out the agricultural sector in the recipient country, thereby making things far worse.
I offered some very unflattering examples of people who do horrible things because they think it is their duty.
The point of it all is that there is a difference between what your motivation is and knowing the right thing to do. It seems to me that any motivation can lead you to go astray because motivations are not the same kind of thing as knowledge.
That said, Johan made a pretty strong case for thinking that some motivations would get you closer to knowledge than others. If you are highly motivated to do the right thing, for instance, you will put a lot of effort into figuring out what the right thing is. That seems right to me and, while I do not think it undermines the point I was trying to make, I have to confess that I have a hard time saying why. So Johan is winning this one and I have to think some more.
Having thought about it a little more, I think that Hume would say that caring about others is a way of knowing what to do. From his perspective, being highly motivated to do the right thing might mean you will put a lot of effort into figuring out what your duty is. But it does not follow that this will tell you what the right thing to do is. In order to know what the right thing to do is, in Hume’s opinion, you need to have a bunch of feelings, especially including benevolent or sympathetic ones.
And then I would illustrate the point with cases in which people coldly follow rules when a sympathetic understanding of others would lead them to bend the rules. I do not know if this would be adequate to meet Johan’s challenge, but that is what I think I would say.
I took issue with Herman’s assertion that the person who helps others only from a sense of duty, having lost all feeling for other people’s interests, would clearly be thought to have “moral worth” (Herman 1981, 378). I do not believe Hume would agree. I do not agree!
But I do not want to press the issue of who is right here. Rather, I think the dispute shows us something interesting about where Hume and Kant are each coming from.
Hume thinks of morality as a social phenomenon. Its function is to make social relations work. The person who receives help from the grudging but dutiful person is not going to want to come back: it is uncomfortable to receive a hand from someone who is rolling their eyes and gritting their teeth! You feel that you have to apologize for the inconvenience and you will avoid asking again if you can help it. Hume thinks this person is bad because his behavior is anti-social. The happy helpful person, by contrast, is highly sociable. You want to be in that person’s company.
Kant does not think of morality that way. His theory is far more individualistic. Morality is about doing your duty and that is something that an individual can figure out for herself using her reasoning powers. Whether it makes other people feel comfortable or not is neither here nor there. The moral person has to think mostly about overcoming her own inclinations and desires, not about pleasing others, in Kant’s view.
I think there is a lot to Hume’s side of this. But there is something to Kant’s point too. I think it is fair to say that Hume minimizes the potential for conflict between what you want to do and what you are morally obliged to do. Kant is much more attuned to that kind of conflict than Hume is.
Finally, two things struck me about Herman’s interpretation of Kant.
First, the limiting condition does not make an appearance in the final section. I expected the story to be “normally, we follow the motive of duty by treating morality as a limiting condition and so our actions normally are done from duty with full moral worth.” Instead it was “normally, we act on our inclinations without giving any heed to the motive of duty at all and so our actions normally have no moral worth.” I found that surprising and it made me wonder whether Herman’s very compelling account of how the motive of duty works is really what Kant had in mind.
Second, I do not think she ever got back to the point that Kant seems committed to holding that the grudgingly dutiful person is morally superior to the happily dutiful person. That was the problem described in the first paragraph.
It has quite reasonably been a source of frustration to sympathetic readers that Kant seems to claim that a dutiful action can have moral worth only if it is done from the motive of duty alone. The apparent consequence of this view – that an action cannot have moral worth if there is supporting inclination or desire – is, at the least, troubling as it judges a grudging or resentfully performed dutiful act morally preferable to a similar act done from affection or with pleasure. (Herman 1981, 359)
I think she might well have shown that Kant has no problem with someone whose motivations include considerations in addition to the motive of duty. But I do not think she has shown that Kant does not have a preference for someone who acts grudgingly over someone who acts out of affection for another person.