1 ‘The Agent’s Own Will’

As Timmermann observes, ‘ethical theories do not themselves issue demands’ (p. 387). The demands they postulate (if any) arise from their conception of the ‘appropriate normative authority’ that underlies moral obligation. ‘In Kant’s ethics’, he continues,

Well, how does this bear on the question of demandingness? Timmermann does not make that entirely clear. It sounds as though he means it in the following way: the issue of demandingess does not arise for Kant, because how rigorous the laws imposed on the agent are depends on the agent’s own will. It is up to the agent to choose their degree of rigour.

Some distinctions are needed here, as to what is meant by ‘the agent’s own will’. As Wille, will is practical reason. So understood, it is indeed the ‘appropriate normative authority’ from which normative practical principles flow. From it flows the content of the moral law, and hence how ambitious, far-reaching, that content is. But it is not Wille, practical reason, that gives this content, as we personally experience it, the character of obligation. That character arises from our nature as finite and sensuous. Insight into the rational content of the law produces in me – as a finitely rational being subject to sensuous impulses – a reaction of respect. It is this that impels me to bind myself, command myself, to obey. Kant thinks of this resolve as an act of self-legislation. Thus, while the normative source of the moral law is practical reason, one can indeed say that it is I who am my own ‘obligating authority’. I bind myself to act in accordance with norms of practical reason – to make Wille my own will. I am, as Kant puts it in the Metaphysics of Morals, ‘the author of the obligation in accordance with the law’ though I am not ‘the author of the law’ (MM, 6: 227).Footnote ¹

In contrast, on a voluntaristic reading of Kant’s ethics, the agent’s empirical will is held to determine the normative content, and not just the obligating character, of the law. On this understanding of normativity, the demands one places on oneself are a matter of one’s own choice (perhaps under appropriate conditions) – with respect to content, as well as form.

I take this voluntaristic reading to be mistaken. Kant holds that the normative content of practical reason is not in any way determined by us. It is not something that can be said to have an author at all – not even God. Meta-ethically, Kant is a rationalist, not a voluntarist. It follows that how demanding (far-reaching) the moral law is is not up to me or anyone. His perceptive phenomenology of morals does not affect that point.

Since meta-ethical rationalism is consistent with a variety of views as to the normative content of practical reason, we have to look at Kant’s substantive ethics to see how demanding it is.

2 Supererogation

Let us turn then to Timmermann’s second rejoinder (section 7). Here he suggests that ‘The overdemandingness objection is usually formulated in terms of right and wrong’ whereas ‘The notions of right and wrong play no significant role in [Kant’s] ethical works’. This, he thinks, is ‘not a terminological nicety, because it provides us with the resources to say of two actions that one is better than the other without implying that the latter is wrong’ (pp. 388-9). The implication, then, is that the demandingness issue arises for theories which hold that failure to do the best thing is wrong.

Now ‘better’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ all have moral and non-moral uses. It may, for example, be better in the non-moral sense to take a train instead of a bus. It may be best to do so, in which case it is the right thing to do, while taking a bus is a mistaken policy – the wrong thing to do. Failure to do the best thing in the non-moral sense is wrong in the non-moral sense.

These are non-moral uses. In contrast, ‘doing the right thing’ may mean doing the morally obligatory thing. In this case failure to do the right thing is morally wrong: it is the impermissible, ceteris paribus blameworthy, thing to do. However, there is also a broader moral sense in which A is a better action than B if it is more laudable, praiseworthy etc.

To the best of my knowledge, no serious moral theory holds that all failures to do the most laudable action are blameworthy. Nor of course is a failure to do that which there was most reason to do necessarily blameworthy. Taking the bus is not (ceteris paribus) blameworthy, though it is the wrong thing to do in the non-moral sense.

Consider then a utilitarian who holds that the best thing to do, in the sense of what there is most reason to do, is always that which maximizes utility. This utilitarian has an impartial-consequentialist theory of reasons. But he is by no means bound to hold that anyone who fails to maximize utility is blameworthy. It may well be that such a practice of blaming would notably fail to maximize utility.

Would such a kind of utilitarianism be ‘too demanding’? No, inasmuch as it does not hold that it is morally wrong to fail to do the best action. This was John Stuart Mill’s position, and as he often emphasized, it leaves plenty of room for supererogatory action – action which is laudable but not obligatory.

In that well-worn example of supererogation, the grenade thrown into a strongpoint, the man who falls on the grenade (assuming he is not a lunatic, but someone who acts to protect his comrades) is more to be admired than the others who take evading action. But they are not blameworthy, as is the one who simply runs away. Moral common sense, or at any rate the military code, does not demand that you should fall on the grenade, though it censures you for running away.

The utilitarian can agree, for although falling on the grenade maximizes utility, this is a clear case in which it does not maximize utility to blame failures to do so. The utilitarian can also agree that falling on the grenade (when done to protect your comrades, in the knowledge that they will not also do it, that you do not have an overriding duty to stay alive, etc.) is the most laudable, praiseworthy, thing to do. But what should we say as to what there is most reason to do?

A utilitarian theory of practical reasons (such as Mill seems to have been committed to) would have to say that the thing there is most reason to do is to fall on the grenade. That is not an excessively demanding theory of obligation – it remains, however, an excessively demanding view of practical reasons. The problem lies in its unlimited, or hegemonic, impartiality. Consider then another view: that there is not more reason to fall on the grenade than to take avoiding action, say by falling flat – although there is more reason to do either of those than to run away. To take this view one must give up a purely utilitarian line about reasons. One could accept that the general good, impartially considered, is one source of reasons, but there would also have to be irreducibly agent-relative, personal reasons. In the case of falling on the grenade, the latter might counter-balance the former, in such a way that neither clearly dominates. On this analysis, it could not be said that there is a moral obligation to fall on the grenade, nor could it be said of either the soldier who falls on the grenade or the soldier who takes avoiding action that they act against reason.

But if there is not more reason to fall on the grenade why is it laudable to do so? Well, we are interested in the dispositions and motives of a virtuous person, not merely in whether they do what there is a moral obligation to do. To give your life voluntarily for others, in a case like that of the grenade, is not something you had to do or should do, but it is not against reason either. It is a sacrifice but not an irrational sacrifice. As Timmermann says (p. 392), the soldier may feel it is something that he personally had to do. That does not mean that he had a moral obligation to do it, and it is not true that he did. Nevertheless, the way he saw it is part of what makes what he did laudable.

It is hard to know what Kant could say about all this. This is not because the ‘notions of right and wrong [understood in the moral sense] play no significant role in [Kant’s] ethical works’ – obviously, they play a very important role. However, the modern discussion of the concept of a reason plays no significant role. Nor, it would seem, does Kant leave space for the notion of a morally laudable action that is not grounded on any obligation. Presumably Kant would agree that it is not a duty to fall on the grenade to save your comrades. Note that it is not even an imperfect duty. It is not true that there is a duty to make heroic sacrifices from time to time, or when the occasion arises. Likewise there is no duty, perfect or imperfect, to save, at risk to one’s own life, a child that has fallen on a railway line, and so on. Such actions are ‘beyond the call of duty’ – perfect or imperfect. The question is what Kant could say (consistent with his overall theory of practical reason) to explain why they are laudable. Timmermann knows much more about Kant’s substantive ethics than I do, and I would be very interested to hear what he thinks.

3 Perfectionism

Timmermann’s third rejoinder is that ‘the amount of virtuous activity we can expect depends on the developmental stage of the agent in question’ (p. 390). That is perfectly true – and of course a point that can be made just as much by a utilitarian as by a Kantian. Indeed it was very often made by nineteenth-century utilitarians of a progressivist-historicist kind. John Stuart Mill is again the most prominent example.

Any ethical theory should be realistic about how much virtuous activity can be expected at a given stage of moral development. But there is also the normative question of what we should expect at a given stage of development, and in particular, what should be regarded as meritorious rather than obligatory.

Here again a problem of demandingness arises if the source of all practical reasons is impartial good. If some action produces more good, and people have become capable, through the stage of moral development they have reached, of doing it, should it not become a duty? Should not such people, who are capable of doing the best, but fail to do so, incur moral criticism? The only limitation on what they ought to do seems to be the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and that people are not (yet) capable of so much altruism.

Again it seems that that is not enough to check the slide into unreasonable demandingness. There must be something that systematically limits or checks the otherwise limitless conversion of altruistic reasons into duties. It need not be a counteracting duty. But it must consist of reasons that countervail against altruistic reasons, and make it reasonable to stop the altruistic drive at some point short of that at which more altruism would do more impartially considered harm than good. These will be agent-relative reasons concerning oneself, one’s family, one’s friends, and in general the roles and attachments in one’s life from which agent-relative reasons grow. I do not think that indirect utilitarianism about duties can achieve this if it is accompanied, as I think it is in the case of Mill, by pure utilitarianism about practical reasons.

As already mentioned, I do not know how Kantian ethics fits into this debate. It does not, as far as I can see, sufficiently articulate the differences and relationships between the obligatory, the meritorious but non-obligatory, and the vast remaining domain of completely non-moral practical reasons. Kant’s ethical foundations are on the whole just as impartial as those of Millian utilitarianism.

There is, however, an exception to this. Kant holds that each of us has a duty, on the one hand to promote the (deserved) happiness of others, and on the other to pursue his or her own perfection (MM, 6: 386). In principle, then, it seems that the obligation to pursue one’s own perfection might check the duty to promote the happiness of others.

Unfortunately, Kant’s notion of self-perfection is itself morally overdemanding. It is not the Schillerian or Millian aesthetic conception of perfected expressive individuality. It is, on the contrary, the moralistic conception that they opposed. The perfection Kant envisages is perfection of the will: ‘The greatest perfection of a human being is to do his duty from duty’ (MM, 6: 392).

To achieve this perfection completely, Kant thinks, is no small task. Though it must be undertaken, it cannot be completed in a finite time. This claim leads him to his ethical proof of the immortality of the soul; however, the relevant point here is what it tells us about how arduous and unavoidable he thinks the task is. It may not be the arduousness of consequentialism, but it has a similar structure: you can take time off from perfecting your self-mastery (consequentialist: from pursuing the impartial good) only to the extent that that helps you to perfect it (pursue the impartial good). In neither case are we given non-moral, personal reasons which can countervail against the moral task.

I conclude, then, that Kant does indeed have something to fear from the overdemandingness objection. Or at any rate (since he might not see ‘demandingness’ as an objection), Kantians who wish to follow a laxer rule (such as that suggested by Mill in the quoted passage) have reason to fear that Kant’s ethics gives them no opening to do so.