The Herder Lecture Notes 60

Near the beginning of the Herder lectures notes we find statements that moral feeling is “unanalysable” and for this reason the judgements it provides regarding what is good and evil are “basic” (H 27:5).52 These claims echo what Kant said in the Prize Essay, namely that the doctrine of the moral sense can provide us with the

indemonstrable, unanalysable, and basic judgements concerning what is good and evil, from which specific duties and obligations can be inferred. Again, therefore, we see the idea of the moral sense as the origin of our judgements of good and evil in the notes.

In addition to the above function of moral feeling as a faculty for representing what is indemonstrably good, we find claims here that moral feeling is “universal.” Not everyone has this feeling to the same degree, but everyone nonetheless has this feeling, even if to very varying degrees (H 27:3).53 Moral feeling is also represented here as “unequivocal” or “unanimous” [einstimmig] (H 27:5). Although he doesn’t elaborate on the meaning of this second quality, Hutcheson’s moral sense had a similar quality. Hutcheson believed the moral sense had the property of “universality” (Hutcheson 2004, 136 ff.), i.e. in every human being the moral sense finds the same things worthy of approbation and disapprobation, namely benevolent actions and malevolent actions respectively. Presumably Kant has something similar in mind with the idea of moral feeling as “unanimous.”

In these lecture notes we also find claims that moral feeling is what allows us to become aware of moral goodness as something distinct from physical goodness (H 27:5).54 This distinction is made because “[f]ree actions may be immediately good (give pleasure), not as means to consequences, so that their value is not to be measured by the results, and they are not equivalent to the physical causes that produce the same effect” (H 27:4). Free actions are therefore physically good in virtue of their consequences, and

52 _{See Hutcheson (2004, 86).} 53 _{See (I4 200).}

54 _{As mentioned in the previous chapter, Hutcheson distinguishes between moral and natural good}

they are morally good in virtue of their intention (H 27:5).55 Free actions, as issuing from the intentions of the agent are for this reason immediately good, rather than mediately, e.g. good as a means to another end. Most important is that “[t]he feeling of pleasure and displeasure concerns either that with respect to which we are passive or else ourselves as an active principium of good and evil through freedom. The latter is moral feeling” (AA 20:146). In other words, moral feeling is that through which we experience pleasure or displeasure in actions that are caused by free agents. Moral feeling is therefore what allows us to be aware of actions that are morally good or evil, as a particular kind of action caused by an agent’s active benevolent or malevolent intentions respectively. On the other hand it is our “physical feeling” which allows us to become aware of actions that are “physically good” (H 27:5), i.e. actions that have good consequences.56

The above features of “moral feeling” hold true for what is called in the Herder notes our “natural” moral feeling as opposed to our “artificial” moral feeling. Our artificial moral feeling is custom or mores. The examples Kant provides are: “Spartan children went naked up to 14 years old; Indian women never cover up the breasts, in Jamaica they go stark naked … marriage with a sister is artificially abhorred; but sacred with the Egyptians” (H 27:6). Our natural moral feeling is our judgement of what is good and evil independently of custom and education, i.e. as natural, unsocialized human beings. In order to determine what our natural moral feeling is, Kant claims we would have to investigate the natural human being outside of society and socialization, and Kant claims Rousseau has looked into this (H 27:6). Indeed, the distinction between natural and artificial moral feeling is an important one in these notes, for it is claimed that “[m]y reason can err; my moral feeling, only when I uphold custom before natural feeling; but in that case it is merely implicit reason; and my final yardstick still remains [natural] moral feeling, not true and false; just as the capacity for true and false is the final

55 _{Actions are morally good by virtue of their intention for Hutcheson as well (see I4 112).} 56 _{It should be noted that Kant anticipates his mature moral philosophy here when he claims that}

what matters is our intention, not necessarily having the ability or power to realize those intentions, i.e. it is better to have a good will and never accomplish anything than it is to have a mediocre or small will and the ability to accomplish a lot (cf. H 27:4 and GMS 4:394).

yardstick of the understanding, and both are universal” (H 27:6). That natural and artificial moral feeling are always mixed and we may not be able to distinguish a moral judgement as coming from one or the other without “investigating the natural human being” could be problematic, but these issues are not discussed any further. Moral feeling is nonetheless presented as a reliable guide in moral matters and it is even claimed here that “[t]he sole moral rule, therefore, is this: Act according to your moral feeling!” (H 27:16)

If we take these lectures notes seriously, there is much in them that parallels Hutcheson’s discussion of the moral sense in particular. At the very least, we find mention of the moral sense as a capacity to distinguish moral good and evil, but we also see it referred to as playing a role in motivation as well, albeit only very briefly. For instance, arguments are presented for the existence of a benevolent motive in human beings in addition to self-interested ones, with Hobbes and Epicurus being named as opponents (see H 27:3-4). In addition to this, later in the notes moral feeling is identified with “the love of humanity” (H 27:74). Although the textual evidence is minimal here, there is therefore at least the small suggestion that moral feeling is present in these notes as playing a role in both judgement and motivation as well.

In this section I surveyed Kant’s various discussions of moral feeling during the 1760s, in both his published works and a set of student lecture notes. As I have shown, there are two senses of moral feeling operative during this time: 1. Moral feeling as the source of our judgement of moral good and evil, and 2. Moral feeling as a force, drive, or principle of action in human beings inclining them towards virtuous action. I have suggested that Kant at least shows interest in moral feeling in the first sense, paired with some reservation, but I have also illustrated that Kant seems to adopt the conception of moral feeling in the second sense and that this seems to be a part of his moral psychology at this point in his development. In the following section I show that Kant explicitly criticizes moral feeling in the first sense after 1769. What I argue later (2.4), however, is that the second sense of moral feeling is something that Kant did not abandon, and certainly not at the same time that he abandoned the idea of the moral sense as the source for moral judgements. Before making this claim and turning to Kant’s lecture notes and reflections from the 1770s, however, I first discuss the important shift or turn that took

place in Kant’s thinking around 1769 and that is reflected in his reflections and the Inaugural Dissertation.