While I do agree with the idea that, should one give Kant a close reading, the absence of happiness from acting in a genuine moral fashion is probably not entirely true. However, I did get the feeling at times when I was reading Kant's more rhetorical and eloquent passages, a tragic tone, that perhaps Kant identified with; that happiness (in the eudaimonic sense) is often times is what the most intellectually reasonable and moral agents must sacrifice.
"And we must at least admit that a morose attitude or ingratitude to the goodness with which the world is governed is by no means found always among those who temper or refute the boasting eulogies which are given of the advantages of happiness and contentment with which reason is supposed to supply us. Rather, their judgment is based on the Idea of another and far more worthy purpose of their existence for which, instead of happiness, their reason is properly intended; this purpose, therefore, being the supreme condition to which the private purposes of men must, for the most part, defer" (Kant, 854).
Thoughts?
I think you are right to point out how Kant emphasized the distinction between happiness and moral conduct. I don’t think he believed that the two were necessarily exclusive, but he did want to argue that reason is not intended to bring us happiness. He believed instinct is more suited to the pursuit of happiness, whereas reason is suited for the “far more worthy purpose” of producing a good will. Whether it is possible for a rational, moral person to achieve happiness as well, I’m not sure. Kant does seem to suggest, though, that happiness is more easily gained by “the common run of men who are better guided by merely natural instinct and who do not permit their reason much influence on their conduct” (854).
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Kant necessitates hardship as a criterion for obtaining morality. Perhaps this is a strain of martyrdom within his writing? I am not sure whether that means that Kant himself was simply a tragic figure who felt he was being sacrificed for morality, or if this is a more reasoned aspect of his world view.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible to find in Kant the essentially tragic worldview of Christianity, and in particular the austere moralism of certain strains of Protestantism (Kant was in fact a Lutheran Pietist). Presumably this perspective operates at a very deep level in Kant's thought.
DeleteThat said, it would be ad hominem to reduce him to that conceptual operating system; we have to look closely at the arguments themselves (as Dom and Sean attempt to do above).