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Kant Without Tears

John Rawls,Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, edited by Barbara Herman, Harvard

University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2000. xxii + 384pp. ISBN 0-674-06296-2 hb; 0-

674-00442-6 pb. 30.95 hb; 13.95 pb.

Few recent works of philosophy have had a greater impact than Rawls'A Theory of Justice, first

published in 1971. It revitalised the whole area of moral and political philosophy and led to a

revival of interest in questions of justice and right. A strong Kantian influence is evident in it,

but the full extent and depth of Rawls' study of Kant is only now revealed with the publicationof these lectures.

They were given at Harvard where Rawls taught philosophy from 1962 until he retired in 1991.

He gave a course on the History of Moral Philosophy throughout this time. As well as Kant, it

dealt with a varying selection of other philosophers drawn from a list which included Hume,

Leibniz, Bentham, Mill and Hegel. The course evolved and changed within this broad structure

over the years, but concentrated increasingly on Kant. Rawls' lectures were dense and difficult,

they involved close analysis of texts. Early on he took pity on the students desperately trying to

scribble down his words and distributed duplicated notes. What we have here is the final version

of these notes for the course given in 1991, only very lightly edited. They retain much of the

dryness and roughness of teaching materials, but they are full of philosophical interest for all that.

The lectures begin with substantial sections on Hume and then Leibniz. They conclude with a

hurried dash through Hegel's ethics. But the main focus is on Kant; these other philosophers

serve primarily to clarify what is distinctive about Kant by contrast. Approximately half the

course is devoted to Kant. The main text is The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.

Initially this was the sole work studied but, as he interestingly argues, Rawls came to the view

that it impossible to understand Kant's ethics properly without also taking into account

developments in the second CritiqueandReligion within the Limits of Reason Alone.

Philosophical problems are often assumed to be eternal and unchanging. The history of

philosophy is then treated as a timeless debate in which one can argue with the great philosophers

of the past as if with a contemporary. This approach has been particularly influential among

analytic philosophers. Jonathan Bennett's work provides a good example. `I make no apology ...

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for fighting Kant tooth and nail,' he says, `it is a misunderstanding to think that a supreme

philosopher cannot have erred badly and often' (Kant's Analytic, p. viii). Duffing up Kant can

be exhilarating, but such hubrishas its dangers. By abstracting Kant from his historical context,

there is a real risk of misunderstanding him and fighting phantoms. Moreover, by proceeding inthis fashion, one also abstracts oneself from one's own context and blinds oneself to it.

Rawls' attitude could hardly be more different. He is very aware of historical context (both Kant's

and his own), and he goes out of his way to be respectful to the philosophers he is studying,

particularly Kant. `All the great figures ... lie to some degree beyond us, no matter how hard we

try to master their thought. With Kant this distance often seems to me somehow much greater.

Like great composers and great artists ... they are beyond envy. It is vital in lecturing to try to

exhibit to students ... a sense of this, and why it is so. That can only be done by taking the thought

of the text seriously, as worthy of honor and respect.' (xvii)

Rawls' approach is guided by two principles: i) to pose problems as philosophers of the past

`themselves saw them'; and ii) 'to present each writer's thought in what I took to be its strongest

form,' because `I always took for granted that the writers we were studying were much smarter

than I was' (xvi). Nevertheless, Rawls does not uncritically accept their every word. Though he

is sparing with explicit criticism, through the selection of material and the account he gives of

it, a distinctive interpretation emerges. This is as illuminating about Rawls as it is about Kant and

the others.

The lectures start with Hume. He is portrayed as primary a naturalist rather than a mere sceptic.

According to Rawls he gives a psychological account of moral reasoning, but has no normative

conception of moral reason. Leibniz is presented as a moral `perfectionist' who maintains that

there is a divinely ordained moral order (`the best of all possible worlds') of which we can have

a priori knowledge and to which we should aspire.

These positions provide the main poles in relation to which Kant's ethics are situated. Kant's

notion of morality as practical reason is contrasted with Hume's naturalistic psychology. There

is a detailed analysis of Kant's various formulations of the Categorical Imperative and of the ways

it is applied in moral deliberation. In his account of this, Rawls has no time for the common

view, first voiced by Hegel, that the Categorical Imperative is a purely formal and empty

principle. He deliberately plays down the role of the formal and a priori in Kant's philosophy on

the grounds that `emphasizing them easily leads to empty and arid formalities, which no one canaccept and which we then erroneously associate with his name.' (275) Instead he stresses the

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themes of autonomy and freedom. Arguable, however, Kant is a much more rigorous, formal and

systematic thinker than Rawls wants to admit or than is Rawls himself.

The contrast with Leibniz is used to present Kant as a moral `constructivist'. For Kant, reason is

autonomous. It cannot take its ideal ready-made from God or from any other external source: that

would be a form of heteronomy, determination by outside forces rather than self-determination.

Reason must construct its ideal for itself, only then is it acting freely and morally.

Again Rawls tries to avoid engaging with the philosophical system in which Kant's ethics is

located and which underpins it. However, some discussion of this is unavoidable. There is a good

brief account of Kant's attempt to reconcile determinism and free will by assigning the former

to the world of phenomena and the latter to the realm of things-in-themselves. Kant talks of two

`realms' in this context but according to Rawls this language is misleading. Kant's position should

not be interpreted as a form of dualism. The scientific and moral, theoretical and practical,

perspectives, `are not points of view on different worlds, nor are they points of view from

different worlds: they are points of view for asking different questions about one and the same

world.' (277)

Rawls also warns against interpreting Kant as a Manichean' who holds that we have two selves:

one is the good self we have as intelligences belonging to the intelligible world; and the other is

the bad self we have as natural beings belonging to the sensible world.' (303) Kant's idea of

autonomy implies instead an `Augustinian' picture. According to this the self is completely free

and `the origin of moral evil ... lies not in a bad self with its natural desires but solely in the free

power of choice. (303)

Although Rawls thus addresses some of the larger themes of Kant's philosophy, he prefers to

stick narrowly to Kant's moral ideas and avoid engaging with Kant's metaphysics insofar as he

can. Kant the logical and systematic philosopher quietly fades from view, and instead we findourselves in the company of a judicious and wise pragmatist offering sage and kindly moral

guidance. This makes for a sympathetic picture, to be sure, but one cannot help feeling that it is

more applicable to Rawls than Kant.

For it is Rawls who wants to stick to ethics, be pragmatic, and avoid metaphysics. Kant, however,

sees ethics as an integral part of a larger philosophical system (so too do Hume, Leibniz and

Hegel for that matter). To imagine that one can have ethics without metaphysics is illusory. This

comes out again at the end of the book, which concludes with a couple of very compressed

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lectures on Hegel in which Rawls' main concern is to stress his social conception of ethics.

Unusually, but illuminatingly, Rawls interprets Hegel's philosophy as a form of liberalism, and

thus as a precursor of his own `political not metaphysical' and liberal conception of justice.

Rawls questions Hegel claim that `there are always only two possible viewpoints in the ethical

realm: either one starts from substantiality, or one proceeds atomistically and moves upward from

the basis of individuality. The latter viewpoint excludes spirit, because it leads only to an

aggregation, whereas spirit is not something individual, but the unity of the individual and the

universal' (362, quoting Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 156Z). According to Rawls, there is a third

alternative, embodied in the social contract as spelled out by Rousseau and Kant. This

`formulates the highest principle in political matters, and honoring that principle fulfills the first

duty that everyone has as a reasonable and rational person to enter into a social union with

everyone else in which the rights of all citizens are guaranteed by the principles of right.' (364)

This argument is reminiscent of the fundamental thought in A Theory of Justice, the idea of

founding principles of justice on what a reasonable person would choose in an `original position'

behind a `veil of ignorance'. The Hegelian objection, that this presupposes an atomistic rational

agent, an `unencumbered self', who exists prior to and independent of social relationships, is

forcefully argued against Rawls by Sandel inLiberalism and the Limits of Justice. It would seem

that Rawls' account of Kant is vulnerable to a similar objection. For it is unclear why the

participants in the sort of social contract he describes are not atomistic agents with a pre-social

rationality of just the sort that Hegel is criticising. Unfortunately, Rawls does not say enough to

show how his own position or his version of Kant avoids this Hegelian criticism.

For all its problems, however, Rawls non-metaphysical reading of Kant gives a remarkably kind

and sympathetic account of his ethics which admirably brings out his continuing relevance. For

that, and for the light they shed on Rawls own views, these lectures are important.

Sean Sayers