Guyer, Paul - Passion for Reason: Hume, Kant, and the Motivation for Morality

03/22/2013

Proceedings and Addresses of the APA Vol 86 Issue 2 (Eastern Div)

This is a paper that tries to find some common ground between Hume's conception of morality as grounded in the passions and Kant's as grounded in a duty to law. The first part starts with an examination and summary of Hume's conception of moral principles as motivational, and thus not the sort of thing that reason, analyzed as "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" is suited to provide (pg5-6). In order to be moved to action we must first have a preference; reason doesn't play that part (pg6).

After this familiar distinction between reasoning and moral sentiment, Hume still tries to explain why we elide them so much: it is because reasoning is a calm activity, as is the realization of moral sentiment-- it too is mostly done calmly (pg7). Author argues further that Hume is offering a more substantive theory: that humans deeply prefer calm and tranquility. Here author reasons that the opposite of a calm passion is a violent one, and a preference for calm would be a preference for freedom from a violent passion, hence humans can have a calm preference for calm freedom (pg7). Author then takes some time to unpack Hume's discussion on the different preferential qualities, focusing specifically on "tranquility" as very highly regarded. Hume means to have the passion for tranquility as both other- and self-regarding, and also argues that this passion must be a calm passion, since it seems absurd to have a violent passion for tranquility (pg8). Thus, according to Hume, we have a strong calm passion for tranquility, the freedom from importune passions.

The next discussion is about Kant, and starts with his famous claim about moral motivation having nothing to do with personal gratification or inclination (pg9). But author argues that Kant believed that reason was not an ultimate end but an instrumental one to attain freedom (pg10-11). The idea author argues for is that, for Kant, we have a passion for our own individual freedom, but reason recognizes that this is universalizeable and thus the passion for (individual) freedom is transformed through reason into some kind of non-passionate motivation for universal freedom (pg11-2). Author first reads Kant's two major formulations in the Groundwork to be relating to securing freedom of choice for all rational actors (pg13). Interestingly, author acknowledges that Kant's version of freedom isn't the negative version of freedom from urgent passions but a positive version of freedom to set one's own ends (pg14). Then, author reads portions of Kant's Critique to suggest that once reason has determined the will to the proper course, it has to pass through the eye of pleasure/pain in motivation before it gets to action (pg14-5). Author goes on to talk about how Kant lists a 'panoply' of aesthetic and/or emotional ways in which humans susceptible to duty (reason) in action (pg15-6). The conclusion is that, for Kant, the self-regarding passion in freedom is molded by reason into a universal concern for the freedom of all (pg17), and becomes a type of "enthusiasm".