Scholars have failed to adequately distinguish Kant’s grades of evil: frailty (weakness of will), impurity, and depravity. I argue that the only way to distinguish them is, f irstly, to recognize that frailty is explicitly, practically irrational and not caused by any sort of self-deception. Instead, it is caused by the radical evil that Kant finds within the character of all persons. Secondly, impurity can only be understood to be self-deception either about the nature of the act itself, which results (...) in an epistemic error, or about one’s motivations for following a properly reasoned, moral conclusion, which results in a motivational error. Thirdly, depravity is self-deception about morality itself, by which the agent believes that it is morally right to follow self-love. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a new interpretation of Kant’s discussion of “the old formula of the schools” in the Critique of Practical Reason – “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni; nihil aversamur, n...

According to Kant each person has an empirical character, which is ultimately grounded in one’s free choice. The popular Causal Laws interpretation of empirical character holds that it consists of the causal laws governing our psychology. I argue that this reading has difficulties explaining moral change, the ‘gradual reformation’ of our empirical character: Causal laws cannot change and hence cannot be gradually reformed. I propose an alternative Causal Powers interpretation of empirical character, where our empirical character consists of our mind’s (...) causal powers. The resulting picture of empirical character allows for moral change and Kantian weakness of will. (shrink)

Kant clearly endorses some version of the ‘old formula of the schools’, according to which all volition is sub ratione boni. There has been a debate whether he holds this only for morally good actions. I argue that a closer look at the distinction between the good and the agreeable does not support this conclusion. Considering Kant’s account of the detrimental and the correct use of this thesis, I argue that rational beings always will sub ratione boni, even when they (...) act immorally, because they act on principles. I argue that Kant’s accounts of self-love and self-conceit support this view. (shrink)

In Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason Kant famously argues that the moral quality of an an agent’s actions depends on the moral quality of their moral character and since their moral character can be either absolutely good or absolutely bad, all of an agent’s actions share the same moral quality: good or evil (R 6: 22). This claim, which implies that any agent who is not wholly good must therefore be wholly evil, has vexed Kant’s readers. Ordinary moral (...) intuitions suggest that differences in moral character come in degrees, and leaving some room for moral variance seems necessary to any account of moral corruption and improvement. What is not often remarked upon is that Kant’s rigorism about moral character stands in apparent tension with his own account, given that in the same work, of the Stufen, levels or grades, of evil: frailty, impurity, and wickedness. I argue that rigorism is grounded in a philosophical insight which we should not give up and show that we can preserve it while making room for the complexity of moral failure if we understand the first two grades of evil, frailty and impurity, as states of moral immaturity, a condition that precedes the acquisition of a stable moral character. To substantiate the claim, I argue that the idea of the acquisition of character must play a wholly different role in Kant’s practical philosophy than that accorded to it on standard readings. Not merely an “empirical” concern, the acquisition of character must be understood as a genuinely rational accomplishment: the development and determination of our uniquely rational capacities for feeling, necessary for the development of stable moral character. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s notion of weakness or frailty warrants more attention, for it reveals much about his theory of motivation and general metaphysics of mind. As the first and least severe of the three grades of evil, frailty captures those cases where an agent fails to act on their avowed recognition that the moral law is the only legitimate determining ground of the will. The possibility of such cases raises many important questions that have yet to be settled by interpreters. Most (...) importantly, should we account for the failures of weakness by appealing to the activity of reason or sensibility? I will discuss this question in light of a tendency to adopt an overly dualistic reading of Kant’s moral psychology. Focusing on Kant’s remarks on weakness from the Religion and the Metaphysics of Morals, I argue that we should understand weakness as arising from the unique difficulties of sense-dependent judgment, rather than from self-deception, flagging commitment, or overwhelming desire. The resulting account offers a unified moral psychology capable of accommodating the many features of weakness that are difficult to reconcile on other readings. (shrink)