Kant on Sentiment

Short Essay Topic #4: Kant on Sentiment

One major distinction between the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and David Hume is the emphasis placed on reason in stimulating moral action. For David Hume, sentiment and inclination are the motivators for moral action, often guided by reason, but able to result in morality independent of it. Kant disputes this proposition and maintains that morality can only come from a priori laws which are derived from reason and the same for every rational being, regardless of feeling and experience. According to Kant, Hume’s morality is conditional in that it is dependent on feeling and does not follow the categorical imperative ascribed to truly moral action.

        A defining distinction between Kant and Hume is the emphasis on a priori principles versus empiricist ones. Both Kant and Hume believe that humans are rational beings and that reason plays a large part in ascertaining what moral action is. Hume believes that morality, while it may be guided by reason, is motivated by sentiment alone and thus has a basis in subjective experience. Regarding reason, he concedes in his Enquiry Regarding the Principles of Morals that it is used to discover moral truths, “but where the truths which they discover are indifferent, and beget no desire or aversion, they can have no influence on conduct and behavior” (Section I). In this respect, there needs to be a certain feeling or sentiment to act morally based on reason and the two can often come to the same conclusion regarding action. While reason may tell us what the right thing to do is, it has no mechanism through which it forces us to act upon this.

Kant, alternatively, rejects this empirical view and maintains that morality is only achieved through moral laws and that to have moral force a law must be valid for all men. Thus, “the basis of obligation must not be sought in the nature of man, or in the circumstances in the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in the conception of pure reason” (Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Section I). In this view, Kant claims that for an action to be morally good, not only must it follow a moral law but do so for the sake of the law, not because of a feeling, inclination, or for the purpose of achieving some result, but through reason. Thus, an action can only be considered moral if it would be universally binding in all circumstances to all people, a situation that Kant ascribes to a “categorical imperative.”

Categorical imperatives, the basis of moral action, are “objectively necessary in [themselves] without reference to any purpose” and not influenced by sentiment or circumstance (Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Section II). They are self-sustainable and not contingent on any desire or feeling so they can be universally binding to all people. An example would be the moral law not to lie, this law being upheld as an end in itself and because it is a universally binding law, not for some other purpose such as maintaining reputation. According to Kant, there is no room for sentiment in categorical imperatives because “feelings, which naturally differ infinitely in degree, cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has anyone a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings” (Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Section II). Because sentiment varies among individuals, it would be impossible to generalize morality based on feeling and thus sentiment would not have a strong role in a moral philosophy or in terms of constructing moral laws.