Rhetoric and Moral Progress in Kant's Ethical Community
Scott R. Stroud
2005
Philosophy & Rhetoric
One of Kant's earliest critical characterizations of the ideal community of moral agents comes in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (GMM, 1785)1 as a system of agents holding ends that are in harmony with those of each other. This is the ideal situation of a multitude of moral agents acting in accord with duty from the internal incentive of duty itself (i.e., from respect for the moral law), and is called here the "Kingdom [Reich] of Ends" (GMM 4:433). While Kant explains the nature
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... nd derivation of the criterion of morality in the GMM, he does little to explain how one is to encourage the using of the idea of duty as incentive by other agents. Thus, similar to his earlier pronouncement in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR, 1781/1787, A810/B838),2 Kant makes the tentative claim in the GMM that the kingdom of ends would result // all were to act from respect for the moral law, but that such universal compliance is not to be expected or forced (4:438). How does this community of morally cultivated humans come about? That question perplexed Kant, and is one he tried to address in a variety of ways in his later ethical, aesthetic, and political writings. The fundamental dilemma he faces, of course, is grounded on the fact that such uniform moral development cannot be forced from the outside (by other agents), since this would violate a key notion of his conception of autonomythat an agent's perfection integrally involves her choosing such perfection. This is a point he makes with clarity in the Metaphysics of Morals (MM, 1797),3 where he argues that forcing an agent to "freely" set an end of perfecting her will is an open contradiction (A/M6:386-87), and cannot be a morally satisfactory way of acting for the improvement of a fellow moral agent. Thus, Kant seems caught between a mere hope that agents will individually choose to improve themselves and the realization that force cannot be applied to the "self perfection of agents. The fundamental question becomes, is there a role for community in the process of creating
doi:10.5325/philrhet.38.4.0328
fatcat:ugmgr32wazhipnuddpnzzama7y