Abstract

Contemporary interpretations of Kant's ethics have tended to assume that he is unequivocally committed to the view that a priori insight into morality's demands is the sole condition of moral motivation; in other words, that the same rational concepts which inform moral judgments also fully motivate us to determine our willing accordingly. On such a view, the definitive rational activity of agents consists in the practice of moral judgment. In this study I contend that Kant's texts implicitly suggest motivation to be rather more contingent than a simple internalist view presumes, and that they presume moral agency to include constitutive activities aimed at sustaining the worldview within which the possibility of moral willing is grounded. ;Drawing on the notion that an agent's moral motivation depends on her belief that rationally-commanded ends are attainable, I show that Kant expects this belief to be somewhat precarious in the subjective outlook of human beings whose practical rationality is significantly affected by empirical experience. The impossibility of self-knowledge, together with the manifestly evil and self-interested appearances of human conduct, means that doubt about the moral worldview is quite familiar to human agents. Out of this concern, Kant prescribes what I call 'disciplinary strategies' through which agents in real danger of succumbing to motivationally-corrosive despair or cynicism can see themselves as morally capable agents and can see the larger social sphere as a genuine arena of moral hopes. Kant's concern with these strategies for maintaining adherence to the moral worldview can be seen to underwrite some of his most contentious doctrines and duties. Insight into this subtle problematic of his moral thought, I contend, can provide new approaches in the ongoing interpretation of Kantian ethics