KANT’S ARGUMENT FOR

THE RATIONALITY OF
MORAL CONDUCT*
BY

THOMAS E. HILL, JR.

K,
I.ANT IS known as a champion of the idea that
moral conduct is demanded by reason; but, despite a remarkable revival of
interest in Kant’s ethics, surprisingly little attention has been paid to Kant’s
explicit argument for the idea.* This neglect is understandable but unfor­
tunate. The misfortune is not that we have overlooked a sound and lucid
proof which could have effectively settled all contemporary controversies
about whether it is rational to be moral; it is rather that we have missed,
or misread, a text which is crucially important for understanding Kant’s
Grundlegung and which contains ideas worth considering in their own
right. The argument in question is what is summarized in the opening
paragraphs of the notorious third chapter of the Grundlegung. The usual
reading not only makes Kant appear careless and unbelievably confused; it
reinforces an interpretation which has Kant holding the outrageous view
that immoral acts are unfree and not even willed. Moreover, common
readings of the argument have Kant arguing from a forbidden empirical
premise (regarding a feeling of freedom), confusing natural laws and laws
of conduct, and committing an obvious non-sequitur by overlooking the
fact that he can only prove freedom “from a practical point of view.”
In what follows I will sketch a reconstruction of the main features of
Kant’s argument, a reconstruction which I believe avoids these gross dif­
ficulties and yet remains (largely) faithful to the text. My discussion, how­
ever, will concentrate more heavily on the earlier stages of the argument,
for two reasons. First, these early stages, in which Kant argues that ra­
tional wills have autonomy, offer an intriguing proof that Humeans and
Hobbesians are mistaken about the nature of practical reason, and the proof
is quite independent of Kant’s belief that he has identified the supreme

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1985) 3 - 23 0031-5621/85/0100-0003-$02.10

Copyright © 1985 by University of Southern California
 4 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

moral principle. Second, though the earlier stages have drawn the heaviest
ridicule, I think they are both more crucial to the interpretation of the
Grundlegung and more promising than the later stages. Though focusing
upon the earlier parts of Kant’s argument, I will however comment briefly
on a step at the end where I believe Kant goes wrong.

/. Aims of the Argument and Possible Reasons for its Neglect

The task Kant undertakes in chapter three of the Grundlegung is nothing

less than proving that moral constraints are requirements of reason. His
argument, then, amounts to an answer to the contemporary question, “why
be moral?” But Kant’s aim is easily obscured by the fact that his imagined
audience is not the sort of moral skeptic with which we are most familiar
today. Kant does not see himself as addressing, for example, those who are
indifferent to morality and demand that philosophy supply them with a
motive to be moral; for Kant’s own theory denies that anyone rational
enough to ask the question could really be so indifferent.^ Nor, I think, is
Kant addressing an audience that doubts that common sense duties, as
opposed to some revisionary standards, are genuinely moral.^ He does not
imagine that anyone who clearly understood his supreme moral principle
would need to wait for a proof before he felt its rational force. The intended
audience, I think, is rather those whose moral commitment is liable to be
called into question by philosophical accounts of practical reason which
imply that morality could not be grounded in reason. To these Kant argues,
first, that their theories of practical reason must be mistaken and, second,
that the only alternative shows moral requirements to be rational. The
argument, if sound, has important implications for contemporary moral
skeptics; but its focus, its style, and perhaps even the degree of care devoted
to its parts are influenced by Kant’s own conception of his audience. That
audience may have picked up ideas of Epicurus, Hobbes, and Hume; Nietzsche
comes later.
The aim of the third chapter, in Kant’s terms, is to establish the supreme
moral principle. This is the second of two main aims stated in the Preface
of the Grundlegung, namely, “to seek out and establish the supreme prin­
ciple of morality”."^ Seeking out, or identifying the principle, is accom­
plished in the first two chapters, which also analyze the principle, refor­
mulate it in various ways, and relate it to ideas of moral worth, dignity,
etc. In the second chapter, using a so-called “analytical” method, Kant also
argues that the concept of moral duty presupposes unconditional com­
mands of reason not based on desires and hypothetical imperatives; but this
only raises the stakes for the third chapter and leaves us with the possibility
that there may be no genuine moral duties. That is, the argument purports
to show that if there are moral duties then there must be non-desire-based
requirements of practical reason^; but whether or not there are such rational
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT

requirements is left an open question. As Kant says, for all that has been
shown, morality may be a“a phantom of the brain”,^ that is, a set of con­
straints falsely believed to be rational but actually having their source in
imagination rather than reason. In chapter two the various formulations of
the supreme moral principle are labeled “the Categorical Imperative”^, but
it is admitted that no proof has yet been given that they are categorical
imperatives or indeed that a categorical imperative is possible.^ That task
is left for chapter three.
If my reading is right, the argument of the third chapter is obviously
important; why, then, has it been so often overlooked or maligned? The
most obvious explanation lies in the fact that the argument is extremely
compact, unclearly stated, and deeply entangled with aspects of Kant’s
metaphysics that have little appeal today. A further obstacle is that Kant
himself suggests that he may have been reasoning in a circle,^ and though
he claims to have found a way out of the circle this turns on an introduction
of the “intelligible world” that is not obviously helpful.*^ One is discour­
aged from trying to unravel all this by the fact that in the Critique of
Practical Reason Kant seems to abandon the project of establishing the
rationality of morals. There moral obligation is simply declared a “fact of
reason” and used to establish that rational wills are free (which is a crucial
premise in the argument of the Grundlegung)f^ Another obstacle is the
fact that Kant spends so much of the third chapter of the Grundlegung
stressing the compatibility of phenomenal determinism and noumenal free­
dom that one is tempted to see the point of the chapter as a defense of
morality against determinism. Finally, I suspect that Kant’s argument has
been underrated because many sympathetic commentators believe that, on
Kant’s own principles, it is unnecessary and perhaps even morally corrupt
to ask seriously, “why be moral?” To read the third chapter of the Grun­
dlegung as an attempt to answer this question, then, would be to see it as
misguided and bound to fail.
Although these considerations help to make the neglect of Kant’s argu­
ment understandable, they are not, I think, adequate to justify it. One can
make some headway despite the obscurities and heavy metaphysics; the
reversal of premises and conclusion in the Critique of Practical Reason can
be explained by the different nature of its p ro je c t;a n d , despite Kant’s
dramatic rhetoric about circular reasoning, the argument of the third chapter
is not in fact a circular one.*"* The long discussion of the compatibility of
freedom and determinism (in chapter three) cannot be the main point;
because this was supposedly demonstrated earlier in the Critique of Pure
Reason and it would not answer the question so provocatively declared
open at the end of chapter two, namely, whether alleged duties are, as they
purport to be, genuine unconditional commands of reason. Again, while
Kant thought it a mistake to try to give reasons for being moral in terms
of desired ends contingently served by morality, this does not mean that
6 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

he failed to recognize a need to demonstrate that moral requirements are

rooted in reason.

II. The Structure of the Argument

The most crucial passages are the following:

Will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings so far as they are rational. Freedom
would then be the property this causality has of being able to work independently of deter­
mination by alien causes. . . .
The above definition of freedom is negative and consequently unfruitful as a way of grasping
its essence; but there springs from it a more positive concept, which, as positive, is richer
and more fruitful. The concept of causality carries with it that of laws (Gesetze) in accordance
with which, because of something we call a cause, something else— namely, its effect— must
be posited (gesetz). Hence freedom of the will, although it is not the property of conforming
to laws of nature, is not for this reason lawless: it must rather be a causality conforming to
immutable laws, though of a special kind; for otherwise a free will would be self-contradic­
tory. . . . What else then can freedom of the will be but autonomy— that is, the property
which the will has of being a law to itself? The proposition ‘Will is in all its actions a law to
itself’ expresses, however, only the principle of acting on no maxim other than one which
can have for its object itself as at the same time a universal law. This is precisely the formula
of the Categorical Imperative and the principle of morality Thus a free will and a will under
moral laws are one and the same.*^

This passage argues in effect that, if free in a negative sense, every

rational will is committed to morality. The following passage contains the
nub of the rest of the argument, which is to show that every rational will
is free (in a negative sense).

Now I assert that every being who cannot act except under the Idea of freedom is by this
alone— from a practical point of view— really free; that is to say, for him all the laws in­
separably bound up with freedom are valid just as much as if his will could be pronounced
free in itself on grounds valid for theoretical philosophy. And I maintain that to every rational
being possessed of a will we must also lend the Idea of freedom as the only one under which
he can act.*^

The main outline of the argument is clear enough. Reordering the parts,
we have (I) an argument that any rational will is free in at least a negative
sense, (II) an argument, turning on definitions of negative freedom and
autonomy, that any will free in the negative sense has the property auton­
omy,^* (III) an assertion, relying on earlier arguments, that any rational
will with autonomy is committed to the principle ‘Act only on maxims you
can will as universal laws’, (IV) an assertion, again relying on earlier
arguments, this last principle is the supreme principle of m orality.F rom
all this it follows that any rational will is committed to the supreme principle
of morality. Thus we can conclude that any one who acts immorally is
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT

acting contrary to a principle which he himself accepts. If we assume that

the principle in question is an unconditional and not merely prima facie
one,^^ then such immoral acts must be irrational because contrary to an
unconditional commitment of the agent. If we assume further that the argu­
ment shows that rational autonomous agents are committed to the supreme
moral principle qua rational and autonomous, then immoral acts will be
irrational not only because they are contrary to the agent’s commitments
but also because they are contrary to a principle the agent acknowledges
to be rational.
Each of the major steps, of course, depends upon subsidiary arguments,
some of which I shall consider shortly. But before that, a few preliminary
remarks may be helpful.
First, in steps I and II Kant aims to show that any rational will has
autonomy, and these stages presuppose nothing about morality. Now though
these stages are parts of a larger argument that it is rational to be moral,
they are of interest independently of that larger project. They are concerned
not merely to affirm a freedom unthreatened by causal determinism but to
argue the necessity of acknowledging rational principles of conduct other
than those which prescribe efficiency in satisfying our desires or in coor­
dinating our means and ends. The conclusion, even at this earlier stage, is
that anyone who acts for reasons must acknowledge at least some reasons
other than facts about what is needed to achieve his ends and to satisfy his
desires. If so, then regardless of what we think of morality there must be
practical reasons which are not hypothetical imperatives. Hobbesians will
be wrong to construe all rational principles as rules of rational self-interest;
modern decision theorists will be wrong if they suppose that all rational
choice principles are relative to intrinsic preferences themselves uncriticiz-
able by reason; and Humeans will be wrong to suppose that reason merely
calculates and discovers facts rather than prescribing conduct. The conclu­
sion is a strong and controversial one: a striking feature of the Grundlegung
is that Kant’s argument for it does not depend upon claims about morality.
As a final preliminary, I must say a few words about the interpretation
which I shall try to avoid.A ccording to this, the will is practical reason
and so cannot will anything contrary to reason; morality is prescribed by
reason and so no one wills to be immoral; the will, which is thus always
good, is free negatively and wills unequivocally perfect conformity to the
laws of autonomy. Thus, on this view, one who acts to satisfy desire contrary
to morality, and perhaps even one who acts to satisfy a morally neutral
desire, does not really will so to act and does not act freely in any sense.
His behavior is a product of natural forces, like that of animals or, better,
animals with complex built-in computers for calculating the best means to
satisfaction. We are strange hybrids sometimes governed by freely
acknowledged rational moral principles and sometimes in the grip of natural
forces beyond rational control; and what switches us from the one mode to
8 PAC inC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

the other is inexplicable. It could not be a free choice because to be capable

of free choice is to be in one mode rather than the other. When we act from
desires we act heteronomously, which is to say unfreely and nonrationally;
when we act from moral principle, we act autonomously, which is to say
freely and rationally. And there can be no free choice between the two, for
free choice is always for the rational and moral.
Kant does say things in the Grundlegung which suggest this strange
picture, but I am convinced that the textual evidence, on the whole, is
opposed to it. However, in order to lay out my reconstruction of the argu­
ment under consideration even in the present sketchy form, I must leave
detailed examination of particular passages for another occasion. For now
I must be content to offer an alternative reading which, I hope, makes more
sense of the compressed and puzzling argument in the third chapter and to
call attention to the disparity between the interpretation I reject and the
views Kant makes more evident in his later ethical writings. These later
w o rk s,w ith the explicit distinction between Wille and Willkür, make clear
that Kant then thought the adoption of ends in general and certainly the
adoption of immoral maxims were free choices of a rational agent, even
though not maximally rational choices. To understand the Grundlegung in
the context of Kant’s work as a whole without regarding it as a radical
deviation, we must see if we can understand his argument without having
to attribute to him the bizarre picture I have sketched with its consequence
that immorality is unfree and unwilling.

III. From Negative Freedom to Autonomy

Conceptual analysis, Kant suggests, should suffice to show that any

rational will which is free in a negative sense is also free in the positive
sense (autonomy). The crucial definitions are those of will, negative free­
dom, and autonomy.
Will is a “kind of causality”, distinct from causation by prior events and
natural laws, a sort of ability to make things happen peculiar to rational
agents.Elsew here, importantly, Kant characterizes the will as a power to
act “in accordance with (his) idea of laws— that is, in accordance with
principles” The idea is that to be an agent, or a rational being with a
will, one must be able to make things happen in such a way that the appro­
priate explanation is reference to the principles, laws, or reasons on which
the person acted. Principles, even laws, enter into the explanation of why
a rational agent did something (as distinct from merely why the body moved)
as the agent’s guiding “ideas” or rationale, not as empirically observable
regularities among types of events. In fact the will for Kant (in contrast,
say, to Hobbes and Hume) is not an event, a mental episode occurring prior
to action, which explains the action in the ordinary empirical way.^^ Kant
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT

believed, of course, that explanations of an act by reference to the agent’s

reasons (and so his will) were compatible with accepting deterministic
explanations of the corresponding behavior by empirical laws; but that
belief is not essential to the important distinction between the two types of
explanation.
This conception of the will has several important implications. First^
Hume’s famous reductio ad absurdum of indeterminism does not apply to
Kant.^* Hume, assuming that an indeterminist’s “free will” was an uncaused
event prior to an agent’s act, argued that such an event, unconnected with
the agent’s character, was not something for which a person could be held
morally responsible. Kant undercuts the objection by denying that “willing”
is a prior event. His own metaphysical account of the will has problems
enough of its own, but he may be right to suspect that, in its classic form,
the dispute between determinists and indeterminists rests on a shared model
of rational action that is inadequate. As many since Kant have acknowl­
edged, those who are troubled by the picture of desire, act of will, and
bodily movement as discrete physical events in a causal sequence, like
falling dominos, do not obviously render responsibility less puzzling simply
by denying the causal connection between the first two items (desire and
will) and/or by assigning these items to an introspectible mental realm.
Second, since an act of will for Kant is not an introspectable phenomenon,
it is no reply to Kant’s argument that the will is committed to a certain
principle (e.g., the Categorical Imperative) to say, “But I don’t remember
deciding to follow that.” An argument that the will of every rational agent
is committed to morality need not be based on observations of their life
histories. In at least this respect moral commitment is supposed to be like
rational commitment to basic principles of logic and empirical understand­
ing. Third, behavior cannot be attributed to the will of an agent, not even
to the “free will” of an agent, unless it is supposed that the agent was acting
for a reason, or guided by “the idea of a principle (or law)”. Thus it is part
of the concept of a will that it cannot be “lawless
Next we need to look at the negative concept of freedom, which is “the
property (the will) has of being able to work independently of determination
by alien causes”. It is clear enough that Kant means at least to deny that
there is an empirical causal account for why free wills act for the reasons
they do. To attribute an act to the free will of a rational agent is not to cite
its empirical causes or to refer to an empirical mechanism or power, caused
or uncaused, which explains how an observed behavior came about. The
Critique of Pure Reason is supposed to have established the possibility that
such a will is in some sense responsible for what we do despite Kant’s
insistence, and supposed proof, that empirical science can in principle give
causal explanations of all phenomena, mental as well as physical. The first
Critique also makes clear the price Kant is willing to pay for this compat­
 10 PAC inC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

ibility, namely, conceiving the will as something apart from the spatio-
temporal order which we can “comprehend”; but that full price, I think, is
not essential to the main thrust of our argument.
The preceding remarks reflect the usual (though still vague) understand­
ing of a will’s capacity “to work independently of determination by alien
causes”. But, importantly, there must be more than this to Kant’s conception
of negative freedom if the step from negative freedom to autonomy is at
all plausible. For even if we conceive a negatively free will as somehow
independent of causal determinism, we could still regard such wills as
(causally inexplicable) capacities to act for the sake of satisfying desires
and inclinations. In other words, though acting for reasons is not to be
understood as being causally determined by one’s given desires, neverthe­
less one’s capacity to act for reasons might be limited, perhaps even by the
concept of reasons, to policies aimed at satisfaction of some of the desires
and inclinations one happens to have. We might speak of such a will as
incapable of motivation by anything but inclination and desire, where
“motivation” refers not to what causes the willing but rather to the range
of things the will can count as reasons or rational objectives of its policies.
Though again I must forego detailed textual argument, I think it is evident
once the distinction is made that Kant regarded a negatively free will as
also capable of acting independently of motivation by desires and incli­
nations. There is a sense, perhaps unfortunate, in which Kant regarded
even the agent’s own desires as “alien”, and “determination” of the will,
even by “alien” factors, does not refer exclusively to having a place in a
deterministic nexus of causes. On the contrary, when Kant writes of a will
“determined” by reason, this is not to cite a prior event and a causal law
but rather to say that the guiding idea on which the agent acted was a
rational one; and, similarly, when a will is “determined” by inclination in
a standard case (not a knee jerk, reflexive scratching, etc.), this means the
agent’s policy or guiding idea was some hypothetical imperative concerning
the means to satisfy the inclination. In the latter case there is a (misleading)
sense in which “alien causes” determine the will; it is not that the agent’s
inclination deterministically causes the agent to will what he does, but
rather that the agent’s chosen policy makes a certain causal connection, or
strictly his belief in a certain causal connection, be a decisive (or “deter­
mining”) factor for what he does. His full rationale (not a causal event) is:
T shall do whatever is necessary as a means to satisfy my inclination B; A
is a necessary means to satisfy B; hence I shall do A.’ The agent has let
the causal law, or strictly his idea of the causal law, between that sort of
means and end be the dominant, or “determining” factor in his choice; but
this does not mean that the willing itself was subject to causal explanation.
Notice that the interpretation I have pledged to avoid does not make this
distinction between being caused to act by one’s inclinations and choosing
to act on policies which make satisfaction of inclination the rationale for
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT 11

acting. Once it is made, however, it seems clear that Kant’s conception of

freedom, even negatively defined, encompasses not only capacity to will
without the willing being explainable by causal laws and prior events;
crucially, freedom also includes the ability to will, or act for reasons, where
the agent’s rationale is not a hypothetical imperative indicating the means
to satisfy an inclination. Without this stipulation the argument that nega­
tively free wills necessarily have autonomy would fall flat: for autonomy,
as we shall see, implies a capacity/disposition to follow principles other
than desire-based hypothetical imperatives.
The most difficult definition in the argument is that of autonomy (or
freedom positively conceived). Part of the difficulty in understanding this
stems from the fact that the misguided picture I am trying to avoid is rather
deeply entrenched in commentaries and is encouraged both by ambiguities
in Kant and by everyday (non-Kantian) talk about autonomy. On that picture
autonomy is an ideal achieved by some and not others, or perhaps by some
people some of the time but not always. Rather than a property of all human
wills, it is seen as a property of purely conscientious wills when willing
out of respect for the moral law. The misleading picture is reinforced by a
facile use of the expressions, which are not Kant’s, of “acting autono­
mously” for free/morally inspired conduct and “acting heteronomously”
for causally determined or at least desire-motivated conduct.
To the contrary, Kant’s view, I think, was that autonomy is a property of
the will of every minimally rational agent, which includes virtually all
adult sane human beings, no matter how wicked. Heteronomy is a possible
property of wills which misguided moral philosophers have mistakenly
attributed to human beings.^® All rational agents, Kant argues, have neg­
ative freedom, and to have negative freedom is to have autonomy as well.
This is not to say that everyone chooses to fulfill the commitments he has
by virtue of having autonomy of will. The immoralist is not one who has
a will characterized by heteronomy but rather one who acts as if the human
will were such, i.e., one who in practice ignores the implications of having
a will with autonomy and acts as if the only authoritative rational principles
were hypothetical imperatives.
Kant’s most explicit definition of autonomy is that it is a will’s property
of “being a law to itself (independently of every property belonging to the
objects of volition).”^* Though by itself this is not so illuminating, what is
meant, I think, can be plausibly reconstructed as follows: a will with auton­
omy is not only negatively free but is committed to at least one principle
acknowledged as rational to follow but such that (a) one is not causally
determined to accept or follow it, (b) it does not merely prescribe taking
the necessary (or best) means to one’s desired ends, (c) the rationality of
accepting it does not depend upon contingent facts about what means will
serve one’s ends or about what ends one happens to desire, and (d) the
principle is “one’s own” or “given to oneself by oneself”, i.e., it expresses
12 P A C inC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

a deep commitment from one’s “true” nature as a rational and (negatively)

free agent rather than, say, expressing respect for an external authority,
tradition, conventions, etc. All this is simply a long way of saying what is
(more vaguely) summarized by saying that a will with autonomy accepts
for itself rational constraints independently of any desires and other “alien”
influences.
With these preliminaries and definitions in hand, we can see how the
argument from negative freedom to autonomy must go. Negatively free
rational wills can act for reasons without being motivated by desires and
hypothetical imperatives. But, as they are not “lawless”, when they so act
they must be following some principle (or principles) which allows us to
attribute the act to a rational agent, acting for reasons, as opposed to whims­
ical behavior, knee-jerk reactions, etc. So the agent must have, or be com­
mitted to, principles he acknowledges as rational even though they are not
of the hypothetical imperative sort. Because the agent is negatively free,
acceptance of such principles cannot be causally determined. Since prin­
ciples adopted because of external authorities (e.g., God), tradition, con­
vention, etc., would be based on hypothetical imperatives, these cannot be
the rational principles in question. The only alternative, it seems, is that
the principles reflect some necessary features of rational agency itself inde­
pendently of its special contexts. If we assume (with Kant) that one’s nature
as a rational will is in some sense one’s “true” self in contrast to passively
“given” phenomenal desires, then we could conclude further that the rational
principles in question are “one’s own” or “given to oneself by oneself” in
a way that desire-based principles are not.
The last step raises deep questions about personal identity which need
not cloud the main point, namely, that if one can act rationally without
causal determination and without following desire-based principles, then
one must have some principle or principles which are rational and yet not
hypothetical imperatives. If rational agents are negatively free, then, they
must acknowledge rational principles of conduct beyond those recognized
by followers of Hume and Hobbes. This conclusion is reached not by
exhibiting an example of such a nonhypothetical rational principle but by
indirect argument that there must be such if there is rational free agency.
Since the argument turns on the capacity to act without motivation by
desire, the conclusion is not that free agents invariably follow nonhypo­
thetical rational principles but only that they must have or acknowledge
them. If they had no such commitments, they would lack the ability to act
rationally without following hypothetical imperatives; but having the capac­
ity does not mean that they will follow the principles whenever they can
(or even whenever the principles prescribe for them). Thus, when later
stages of the argument identify the laws of autonomy with moral con­
straints, it will not follow that free rational agents invariably act morally
but only that they can (and must to avoid irrational conflict of will).
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT 13

It may be useful to consider two objections. First, does it make sense

to say (with Kant) that rational agents can act independently of desires and
inclinations? This depends upon how these are conceived. Kant’s idea of
desires and inclinations, at least in the context of our argument, is narrower
than some conceptions and wider than others. If it is confused with the
narrower conceptions, Kant’s idea of freedom will seem less controversial
(and interesting) that it is; and if Kant’s idea of desires and inclinations is
confused with the wider conceptions, then his idea of freedom will seem
absurd. To begin with the wider conception, there seems to be a use of
“desire” and related words which refers to whatever motivates an agent,
whether empirically discernable independently of his act or not. That an
agent “desired” (or, better, “wanted”) to do something in this sense is
simply inferred from the fact that he did it, given options. Since there are
no independent grounds for attributing the “desire”, obviously mentioning
it does not explain what was done but only characterizes it as voluntary,
unlike knee-jerks, etc. To say that we can freely will to act independently
of desire, in this sense, is obviously absurd; and Kant did not mean this,
for he held that even the purest moral acts are motivated, in some sense,
by an inexplicable “interest” in the commands of reason.
Sometimes “desire” (and related words) seem to be used quite narrowly,
referring to dispositions that are noticeably (and often urgently) felt by the
agent prior to acting, involving pleasant anticipation, painful fear of loss,
tendencies to search for means of fulfillment, to experience frustration when
thwarted and joy when fulfilled, etc. It is tempting to suppose that this is
what Kant had in mind, for it is not very controversial that we can act for
reasons without being motivated by desires in this narrow se n se .W e seem
to do so often when we go about our routine business, forgo minor pleasures
for health reasons, and so on. Kant does at times seem to have in mind this
narrow sense, especially when dramatically depicting struggles between
duty and inclination; but the argument needs more than this and Kant clearly
intended more than this in his discussions of freedom. We would still be
acting independently of desire in this narrow sense whenever our reasons
were based simply on Hume’s “calm passions”, or mild preferences unac­
companied by pleasures of anticipation, or aversions we attribute to our­
selves more from inference than from feeling. But, however rational, such
acts would not have the independence of empirical motivation Kant at­
tributes to acts which manifest freedom.
What, then, is the relevant sense of “desire” and “inclination”? Fine
points aside, these are virtually any empirically discernible motivations
that one may happen to have so long as they are not concerns essential to
all rational agents as such. They include desires in the narrow sense but
also Hume’s “calm passions” and any other preference, liking, aversion,
love, hate, etc., which rational agents might lack and which is not attributed
solely because they acted voluntarily. Negative freedom and autonomy imply
14 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

capacity for rational action in which the agent’s reason is not to achieve or
do something desired in this intermediate sense. Since Kant repeatedly
grants that any behavior may also be empirically explained (e.g., by desires,
by the feelings associated with “respect”, or by physical science), his point
is not to deny this but to say something about reasons: namely, that the
status of the rational agent’s end as a reason for the agent does not always
depend upon the agent having towards it an empirical disposition of the
sort rational agents might or might not have. The thesis that we are free
agents in this sense is controversial, of course, but not obviously absurd
(as on the wide conception of desire) or uninterestingly true (as on the
narrow conception of desire).
A second objection should be m entioned.F or all that has been said, is
it not possible that a will with autonomy has for its one and only rational
principle the pure Hypothetical Imperative? This is the principle that it is
rational to take the necessary and available means to one’s ends or else
abandon those ends. I call this “the Hypothetical Imperative” because it is
a version of the principle behind Kant’s particular hypothetical imperatives,
and I call it “pure” because it does not specify that the ends are willed
because desired, or for some other reason, or indeed for any reason. It
might seem that my characterization of autonomy leaves open that this is
the only non-desire-based rational principle.
One problem with this suggestion is that the principle in question (as the
name suggests) does not unequivocally prescribe any act even given full
information about the situation, one’s preferences, etc. It says only, “Take
the means or drop the end”, giving no standards for the rational assessment
of ends. Now conceivably this principle (in a more carefully stated version)
is the only necessary principle of rational agency; but then agents who
followed it, selecting their ends according to their inclinations or for no
reason at all, would never act for sufficient reasons, as (I believe) Kant
thought a rational free will could do. Admittedly, in a sense such a will
would not be “lawless”, for it would have the pure Hypothetical Imperative
as a necessary rational principle; but, unless we assume something further,
reason would at best prescribe an option rather than a course of action.
Though Kant does not raise the issue explicitly, I take it that he conceived
rational free wills as sometimes more definitely constrained than this.
If we could assume (as many do) that all preferences, or all preferences
that survive a process of informed reflection, have some weight as reasons,
then ends could be rationally assessed by the likelihood and costs of achiev­
ing coherent sets of preferences. But this would presuppose a putative
principle of rationality beyond the pure Hypothetical Imperative, which is
the only principle of practical reason Kant recognizes as analytic. Since
that further principle assigning prima facie rational force to our empirically
given preferences (or informed preferences) is nonanalytic, unless it could
be given a “synthetic a priori” justification Kant would deny its status as
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT 15

a necessary principle of reason just as he denies this status to the substantive

principles “Satisfy the promptings of your (supposed) moral sense” and
“Do all you can to satisfy your desire to be happy.” Assuming, then, that
such principles are not necessarily rational and also that free wills inde­
pendently of their given desires and inclinations can nonetheless have suf­
ficient determinate reasons to act, one whose “reasons” were fixed solely
by the pure Hypothetical Imperative and de facto preferences (or informed
preferences) would not have a will with autonomy.
These remarks reveal a heavy burden left for the next stage of the argu­
ment, i.e. the attempt to show that rational wills necessarily have negative
freedom (and so autonomy), but we should perhaps not expect the condi­
tions for freedom to be so easily satisfied that the concept is of little use in
Kant’s ultimate project of showing that the basic standards of morality are
necessarily rational.

IV. From Rational Agency to Negative Freedom

Now, more briefly, we need to consider the notoriously compact argu­

ment that every rational will is (negatively) free.
First some preliminary comments. Though Kant does not explicitly refer
to freedom negatively conceived in presenting the argument, this is what
the argument requires (given that the transition from negative freedom to
autonomy is argued separately). Further, we should not think of the argu­
ment as concerned with some new sense of freedom (“practical freedom”),
as some have suggested; the qualification “from a practical point of view”
which Kant attaches to the argument refers not to a new sense of freedom
but to the type of argument given and a restriction on the legitimate use of
its conclusion. Again, we should note that the argument, strictly speaking,
is not that we, or any particular individuals, are free; it is that every rational
agent, as such, must be free. Later, after raising the objection that his
reasoning may have been circular, Kant supplements the basic argument
under consideration with the contention that even in our theoretical judg­
ments, apart from practical questions, we must take ourselves to be mem­
bers of an “intelligible world”, in some sense independent of given sensuous
inclinations.^^ This further argument seems relevant to residual doubts that
we are rational free agents (as defined); but this goes beyond the project at
hand. Finally, the standards for rational agency must not be too high. Since
any being not rational in this sense will not be under moral obligation, the
criteria of rationality here must be satisfied not only by the perfectly rational
but also by the imperfectly rational wills that Kant thought virtually all
human beings to be.
The outline of the argument for negative freedom is as follows:

(1) A rational will cannot act except under the Idea of freedom.
16 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

(2) Any being that cannot act except under the Idea of freedom is
free from a practical point of view.
(3) Therefore, rational wills are free from a practical point of view.

Implicitly the argument continues:

(4) “Free from a practical point of view” is sufficient for purposes

of the rest of the argument for the rationality of moral conduct;
and so for the purposes of that argument the qualification can be
dropped.

In order to avoid reducing the argument to obvious silliness, we need to

guard against several temptations. First, the first premise cannot be read as
saying that we “feel free”. Whether true or not, this would be a contingent
empirical premise about us incompatible with Kant’s insistence on an a
priori method; what is needed is rather a necessary truth about rational
agency. It would not follow from the fact that one could not act without
feeling free that one was free even for practical purposes; just as it would
not follow from the fact that a professor could not lecture without feeling
brilliant that he was brilliant for practical purposes. What is so “for practial
purposes” is at least a reasonable assumption to make in deliberating and
deciding what to do, and neither assumption is reasonable to act on just
because it is unavoidable feeling associated with the activity in question.
Second, the first premise should not be read as saying that those who
sincerely believe in thorough-going determinism cannot act or, conversely,
that no one who acts ever believes sincerely in thorough-going determin­
ism. Surely many philosophers and scientists have believed in complete
determinism, and it is too much to suppose that they lose that belief when­
ever they do anything. “Acting under the idea of freedom”, then, is more
plausibly construed as “seeing oneself as free” or perhaps “taking oneself
to be free” for certain purposes. The point of the first premise, then, would
be that rational agents, in deliberating and deciding what to do, necessarily
see themselves as free, regardless of their standing convictions on the
metaphysical status of determinism. It is, one might say, a necessary con­
dition of playing the game of deliberation.
Third, an important background of the argument is Kant’s belief, which
he thought he had proved, that the idea of free agency is such that there
can be no empirical evidence or sound metaphysical (“speculative”) argu­
ment that rational agents are unfree. If there were strong reasons for believ­
ing that rational agents are not free, then one could not so convincingly
argue that it is reasonable to assume the opposite for practical purposes just
because that is how rational agents must see themselves in acting. By
analogy, suppose (implausibly) that in acting rational agents necessarily
see themselves as indestructible Cartesian souls but that there are good
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT 17

empirical and/or philosophical arguments that this is an illusion. Then we

would naturally be reluctant to conclude that for all practical purposes they
are reasonable to assume that they are indestructible Cartesian souls, for
practical purposes include deliberation about life-risking activities and their
assumption has implications for this which they should reject no matter
how they unavoidably “see themselves”.
Finally, we must not construe the conclusion that rational wills are free
from a practical point of view as merely a repetition of the first premise
that in acting rational wills necessarily see themselves as free. If construed
that way, the argument would go nowhere. The conclusion is that for all
purposes of deliberation and decision it is reasonable to accept all impli­
cations of the assumption that one is free and unreasonable to let one’s
deliberations be influenced by the contrary idea that one is, or might be,
u n f r e e . W e need here a distinction between merely seeing oneself as free,
which is (by the first premise) unavoidable in rational deliberation, and
taking full account in one’s deliberation of all the implications of the
assumption that one is free. This is important because, by the rest of Kant’s
argument, the implication of the assumption that rational wills are free is
nothing less than that they are rationally bound to morality. The inevitability
of rational agency (expressed in the first premise) is taking oneself to be
free when deliberating and acting; the resulting prescription for all rational
agents (expressed in the conclusion that we are free from a practical point
of view) is that it is only rational to act on the full implications of the
assumption that we are free. The latter is not inevitable but is what, accord­
ing to the argument, we rationally should do.
Putting the pieces together, then, the argument runs as follows: Rational
agents necessarily see themselves as (negatively) free when deliberating
and acting; this means not only that they look upon themselves as choosing
among options the outome of which is not determined by prior empirical
causes, but also that they see themselves as capable of reaching a decision
in a way that is not a function of their given desires and their beliefs about
the means to satisfy them. As in theoretical judgments guided by reason,
rational agents deliberate with the view of themselves as able to reach
reasoned conclusions which do not fit, or well serve, what they feel most
inclined to. Given the impossibility of proof or even evidence that this view
of themselves is illusory, they should accept, for all practical purposes, the
idea that they are free in this sense. That is, they should accept any impli­
cation of the idea that “As a rational agent I am (negatively) free” as a
reasonable assumption in all their deliberations about what to do.
This conclusion, we should note, is all that the remaining argument
needs. For the argument as a whole is a practical one, addressed as it were
to those deliberating about what it is rational to do and, in particular, to
those wondering whether philosophical arguments concerning practical rea­
son should be allowed to undermine their confidence that it is rational to
18 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

be moral. To this audience the argument for negative freedom says, in

effect, it is perfectly rational for your deliberative purposes to assume that,
as a rational agent, you are negatively free: that is, you should assume that
any account of practical reason is mistaken if it denies your ability to choose
independently of determining causes or your ability to act for reasons other
than desire-based hypothetical imperatives.
The preceding remarks are intended to reveal, or reconstruct, the initial
argument for negative freedom as more coherent and plausible than it may
at first appear; but two residual doubts should at least be raised. First, now
that so much seems built into the first premise, what reason do we have to
accept it? In particular, why suppose that rational agents must see them­
selves in deliberation as capable of being guided by rational standards other
than maximum preference satisfaction? Kant believed that the latter stand­
ard could not be established as necessary by either the analytic or synthetic
a priori methods he acknowledged; but has this been shown? Second, even
if the sort of rational wills Kant had in mind necessarily see themselves as
Kant says, why believe that have rational wills of this sort? Perhaps we
can form an idea of such rational agency but have to content ourselves with
more mundane standards.
The argument we have been considering seems to rest the case on a
thought experiment, or (more grandly) as phenomenological test: “Just try
to see yourself (in acting) as lacking negative freedom and you will discover
that you cannot.” But this reply, as Kant apparently realized, may be uncon­
vincing by itself. Even if we discover what Kant expects, how do we know
that the test reveals anything more than a universal but contingent feature
of human nature? Also since the cases in which we are most convinced of
our capacity to act rationally independently of given preferences are likely
to be cases of duty vs. inclination, might not our conviction be due to the
fact that we have presupposed the rationality of moral conduct (which is
what was to be established)? These worries would lead naturally to Kant’s
discussion of the possibility of circular reasoning and his introduction of
the “intelligible world” as the “third term” between reason and freedom.
The latter idea, I suspect, stems not so much from obsessive concern with
an other-wordly metaphysics as from the thought that even theoretical judg­
ments, in science and everyday life, presuppose that we are guided (or
guidable) by standards of rationality which, though applicable to experi­
ence, are not derived from experience and which are importantly different
from “Find the conclusion that best suits your given preferences.” That we
are the sort of beings capable of being guided by such standards is supposed
to be evident not only in cases of moral conflict or other practical choices
but also in theoretical Judgments. The reply assumes Kant’s idea of the
unity of theoretical and practical reason, which Kant does not try to defend
in the Grundlegung: and it raises deep questions beyond the immediate aim
of this paper.
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT 19

V From Autonomy to Morality

The preceding steps leave us with the striking conclusion that any rational
agent is, as such, committed to at least some principle of conduct acknowl­
edged as rational but not based on his desires and the imperative to take
the necessary means to them. The underlying idea is that practical reason,
like theoretical reason, enables us to reach conclusions on some basis other
than that they get us what we most want. The next step, of course, is to
identify the rational principles acknowledged by wills with autonomy as
moral principles, the supreme moral principle and (perhaps) its deriv­
atives. Kant’s attempts to do this in the first and second chapters of the
Grundlegung by (a) arguing that the supreme moral principle is “Act only
on maxims which you can will as universal law” and (b) arguing through
successive reformulations of this principle that it is “the principle of auton­
omy”, i.e. equivalent to saying, “follow the laws of a rational will with
autonomy.”
Though I believe these steps to be fundamentally flawed, I must postpone
the attempt to argue the point and to explore a more promising route to a
later formulation of the supreme moral principle. Nevertheless I will ven­
ture one general comment on this final stage of the argument. The main
problem, I suspect, is that Kant switched illegitimately from two quite
different readings of his famous first formulation of the supreme moral
principle. The first reading is what naturally emerges from the argument
we have been considering. Ask what principle, if any, must a rational will
with autonomy accept, and an obvious, though rather unhelpful, answer
will be ‘Act in such a way that you conform to laws, or rational principles
of conduct, you (or any rational being) accept independently of desire.’
Assuming that all morally relevant acts can be construed in terms of their
maxims, this can also be expressed ‘Act so that your maxims can be willed
consistently with whatever rational constraints you (and others) are com­
mitted to as wills with autonomy.’ Now in his transitions to the first formula
of the supreme moral principle, Kant seems to be assuming that this is just
what the formula says. What it declares, he says, is “conform to universal
law as such,” where ‘universal law” has been defined to exclude rational
considerations based on d e s i r e s . S o far, so good: that is, the formula is
readily seen as one that any rational will with autonomy must accept. But
now the trouble begins when Kant treats the same first formula as the
identical with, or as entailing, a principle that one must act only on maxims
which one can will as universal laws in the sense that it is (rationally)
acceptable that everyone act on the maxim. This moves from an undeniable
formal principle to a dubious substantive principle; and despite all the
brilliant aid Kant has received from sympathetic commentators, I fail to
see how this transition can be made legitimately.
I conclude, however, with a more modest point. If I am right that Kant’s
 20 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

transition to a substantive supreme moral principle is illegitimate, this would

be quite in line with my main reading of his argument. For my hypothesis
has been that the task which Kant saw as most difficult and most sorely
needed was not to convince anyone to accept his supreme moral principle
or even to believe that if there are laws of autonomy they must be the
familiar moral constraints. These matters, I suspect, he considered rela­
tively easy, and perhaps for this reason he did not bother much about his
argument for them. The harder task, and what was most needed, was what
he thought he had accomplished in the earlier stages we have considered
above: namely, to show that, despite philosophers’ arguments to the con­
trary, there must be principles of rational conduct other than desire-based
hypothetical imperatives. That too may be an error, but Kant’s argument
for it deserves more attention.

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

NOTES

♦This paper is a compressed version of ideas presented at a conference on Kant’s ethics at

Johns Hopkins in the summer of 1983, and an earlier version was also presented at the A .P A .,
Pacific Division, meetings and at a meeting of the Triangle Ethics Group in Chapel Hill in
the spring of 1985. Thanks are due to the participants at those meetings and also to lyier
Burge, Stephen Darwall, Gregory Kavka, William Lycan, Christopher Morris and others for
their helpful comments. A special thanks is due to Burge for constructive help and encour­
agement in long discussions on these matters.
'There are exceptions, e.g ., recently Dieter Henrich’s “Die Deduktion des Sittengesetzes”
in Denken im Schatten des Nihilismus, ed. Alexander Schwan (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1975), pp. 5 5 -1 1 2 , Karl Amerik’s Kant’s Theory of Mind, ch. VI, and
unpublished work of Henry E. Allison of UCSD.
assume that the person who seriously asks “Why be moral?” judges that he morally
ought to do certain things but still has some sort of question. But on Kant’s view, to judge
that one morally ought to do something is, in part, to believe that the conduct in question is
required by an unconditional “command of reason”; and surely any (even minimally) rational
person who believed this could not be indifferent to the conduct. This fits with Kant’s repeated
suggestions that respect for moral law is, as it were, forced from us, that even murderers
acknowledge the justice of their (death) sentences, etc.
^This seems clear at G 7 1 -2 {Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by
H. J. Patón, Harper edition, will be abbreviated by “G ”; Prussian Academy standard edition
will be indicated in brackets following, e.g ., here [403-404]).
^G 60 [3 91-92].
^G 92 [425].
^G 112 [445].
^G 88 [421], G 96 [4 2 8 -9 ], G 108 [440].
®G 92 [425], G 108 [440], G 112 [445].
^G 117 [4 4 0 -1 ].
'®G 120-1 [453].
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT 21

"CPrR 2 8 -3 1 [2 9 -3 2 ]. (Critique of Practical Reason, tr. L. W. Beck, Liberal Arts Press;

Prussian Academy pages in brackets.)
J. Patón is an example; see, The Categorical Imperative, pp. 221.
*^In CPrR, esp. 2 9 -3 1 , [3 0 -3 1 ], Kant again argues for the mutual entailment of (a) rational
beings are free and (b) rational beings are under moral law, but he says that consciousness of
(b) is the grounds for knowing (a) and not the reverse. This is clearly a reversal of the order
of argument in G, and probably represents an abandonment of that argument. But, whether
Kant would want it or not, there does seem to be a way of reconciling the positions in the
two works. That is, take the Groundwork as addressing doubts of agents deliberating about
what to do whereas the Critique is concerned more with completing a project on the nature
of reason and which among traditional metaphysical beliefs one can reasonably accept (despite
the arguments of the first Critique). The first, then, belongs to moral philosophy, traditionally
conceived; the second to the special epistemological/metaphysical/moral undertaking involved
in the new critical philosophy. Since the audience of G is raising a practical question, it can
be presumed willing to accept for those practical purposes anything implied by what it must
assume in asking the question. Thus it need not demand any theoretical demonstration or
intuition ( “intellectual” or otherwise) of freedom if it is made clear that freedom is presupposed
in its questioning. The audience of CPrR, on the other hand, may be thought more concerned
with the Justifiability of certain metaphysical beliefs, not from sheer speculative curiosity of
course but also not from a practical need to satisfy the doubts about the rationality of morals
(expressed at the end of the second chapter of G). If so, this audience is prepared to accept
what the other audience was ready to entertain doubts about (namely, that as rational agents
we are really under moral obligations). And, if the CPrR audience is not seen as engaged
primarily in deliberation about what it ought to do, the argument of G from the implications
of deliberation is less appropriate. In any case, it is worth noting that the argument of G does
not commit any of the mistakes in arguing for freedom that the CPrR condemns (e.g., sup­
posing there is an intuition of freedom).
‘"^This should be clear at least in my reconstruction of the argument, for none of the premises
presuppose moral obligation. As Karl Ameriks helped me to see, the suspicion of circular
reasoning may arise from worry that the first premise in the argument for negative freedom
(i.e., rational wills cannot act except under the Idea of freedom) might seem convincing only
because it is most evident in conflicts of duty and inclination. If so, the “solution” (which
emphasizes that in all uses of reason we view ourselves as members of an “intelligible world”)
would have a point without admitting that the original argument ever actually presupposed
moral obligation. More needs to be said about the supposed circle and its solution, but this
goes beyond the main argument I try to reconstruct here.
‘^The argument reconstructed in this paper is an argument that morality is rational but it
does not rely on the forbidden means-ends reasoning.
*^G 114 [4 4 6 -7 ]
'^G 1 1 5 -6 [448]. This is the heart of (I) in the summary of my next paragraph.
**G 114 [446],
'^G 114 [447]. I assume that the strange formula in this passage, “the principle of acting
on no maxim other than one which can have for its object itself as at the same time a universal
law”, is meant to be the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative, and so have refor­
mulated it.
^°G 114 [447]. “This is precisely the formula of the Categorical Imperative and the principle
of morality.” This is argued twice, at G 6 9 -7 0 [402] and G 88 [420-1].
^‘Kant clearly intended the principle to be unconditional and overriding, rather than prima
facie, but one may question whether the argument supports this. In fact the sort of argument
he gives seems unlikely to support an over-riding principle; for the idea is to show that free
rational agents unmotivated by desire must nevertheless have some rational principle to follow.
Why would a principle that says what one prima facie ought to do not suffice? If this is all
the argument supports, then the conclusion must be more modest, i.e., that every rational
 22 PAC inC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

agent has some reason to be moral or immorality is always opposed to some prima facie
principle o f the agent. I will pass over this problem here, not only from lack of time, but also
because the problem concerns later stages of the argument which are not my main concern.
^^The idea here is that there are two routes to show the rationality of moral conduct. One
is to show that immorality conflicts with a commitment of the agent, whether or not that
commitment was independently demanded by reason. The other is to show that rational agents,
as such, necessarily are committed to a principle. I suspect that Kant intended both; for he
argues that all minimally rational agents have autonomy and so are committed to the supreme
moral principle, and he argues that necessarily, qua rational and free, they must accept the
supreme moral principle. It is worth noting, though, that if the argument failed for the second,
stronger claim, the first, weaker claim still would need to be considered. That strategy fits
with the often repeated point that immorality involves conflict of will.
^^This account is most evident in R. R Wolff’s The Autonomy of Reason (Harper and Row,
1973).
^'^The two views of will are discussed in John Silber’s introduction to Kant’s Religion Within
the Limits of Reason Alone (Harper edition). Silber thinks that Kant was ambivalent at least
in the Groundwork between the later view and the dualistic picture presented by Wolff. Beck’s
commentary on the second Critique also makes much of the Wille vs. Willkür distinction.
Rawls, I am told, distinguishes in lectures between the “Manichean” view and the “Augus-
tinian” view of will, finding Kant ambivalant in the Groundwork. My concern here is not so
much to deny the ambivalence, or confusion, as to see how the argument of the Groundwork
does not rest on the more simplistic picture.
114 [446].
80 [412], G 95 [427].
^^Strictly, the will is not even a hidden, unobservable event in time; to ascribe a will to a
person is not to refer to a mysterious event or thing but merely to say, without further
explanation, that the person has a capacity to make things happen in a way that makes appro­
priate the explanation “His reason was. . “He was guided by the principle. . .”, etc.
^*See the section entitled “Of Liberty and Necessity” in David Hume’s A Treatise of Human
Nature, Book II, Part III (L.A. Selby-Bigge edition, pp. 39 9 -4 1 2 ).
^^Kant suggests that it is because the will is a kind of cause that it cannot be “lawless”, but
I take it that the point follows as well from the definition of will as acting in accord with the
idea of principles or laws. There is no doubt a play on different senses of lawful and lawless,
but the main point seems clear enough, namely, to attribute an event to a person, thing, or
prior happening as its cause (source, or author) we need some appropriate connection between
the event and the alleged source, something to warrant saying the event occurred in some
sense because of the source. Often the connection is an observable regularity between types
of events, and then the “because” is an empirical causal one; but in the case of human action,
on Kant’s view, the connection is between the event and a person’s beliefs and policy com­
mitments, and then the “because” must be of a different type. This leaves much unexplained,
of course, but the minimal point is just that some connection must be made, this can be of
two kinds, and both involve “laws” in some sense or other.
^®See G 111-112 [443 - 444]. Note that we have heteronomy as (mistakenly) regarded the
“basis of morality”, as a characterization of a rule or (would be) law, or as “the result” if one
tries to make hypothetical imperatives the basis of morality (G 108 [441]), etc. It is significant
that Kant’s discussion of heteronomy concerns not the ordinary following of prudential max­
ims and rules of skill but wrong-headed philosophical attempts to base morality in various
ways on hypothetical imperatives.
^‘G 108 [440].
^^I owe a thanks to Gregory Kavka for alerting me when, in an earlier version, I was
yielding to this temptation.
^^This objection comes from Stephen Darwall, who may still be dissatisfied with my sketchy
reply.
 KANT ON THE RATIONALITY OF MORAL CONDUCT 23
^There is a sense, of course, in which even the non-conditional “Always pay your debts”
prescribes options, for one may pay in coins or in bills, in cash or by check, etc. I trust,
however, that patience could make clear how the relevant sense differs from this.
^^SeeG 116-121 [448-453].
^^Strictly speaking, I suppose, the claim that, from a practical perspective, rational wills
are free implies not only (a) that one should, for purposes of deliberation, accept all the
implications of assuming that one is oneself free but also (b) that one should, for purposes of
deliberation, accept the implications of assuming that others one takes to be rational are also
free. The latter would be of practical importance when trying to decide whether execution
for murder is justified. Unfortunately, the argument for (b) has to be more complicated and
raises special problems. So I shall ignore it here, (a) should suffice for most practical purposes,
e.g ., to dispel the doubts about one’s own rationality in being moral which are raised by either
determinism or the thesis that all rationality is means-end calculation to maximum desire
satisfaction.
^^This culminates at G 108 [440].
^®See G 6 9 - 7 0 [402] and G 88 [420-421].