In the opening statement of his book, Robert Stern expresses the hope that his discussion of the issues surrounding the notion of moral obligation will help illuminate them ‘at the level of the history of ideas, in showing the role these issues have played in the thought of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, and their period more generally; and at the philosophical level, in helping us to understand these issues more clearly in a systematic way’ (1). Stern’s book is remarkably successful in shedding light on the philosophical problem of moral obligation via a discussion of the philosophical views of three key figures of 18th and 19th century European philosophy, offering original and often challenging interpretations of each of their accounts, as well as of the philosophical concerns linking them to one another. This makes Understanding Moral Obligation a commendable piece of scholarship within the history of philosophy and contemporary meta-ethics alike.
The book is divided into three parts, each one discussing the respective accounts of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, as well as the arguments that link them to one another. As Stern puts it, the three positions represent ‘a kind of dialectical ‘circle’, […] each with their respective advantages and disadvantages’ (3), thus delineating the dialectical situation with regard to the philosophical problem of moral obligation itself.
The first part presents a highly original and well-defended reading of Kant’s ethical theory while setting the stage for the entire discussion to follow. Stern does so by opposing his reading of Kant’s own central concerns, as well as of the strand in the history of modern ethical thought departing from the Kantian project, to what he calls ‘the standard story’, put forward mostly by constructivist interpreters of Kant such as John Rawls, J.B. Schneewind and Christine Korsgaard. As far as the standard story goes, the Kantian project presents a radical shift in modern ethical thought in that Kant’s introduction of the notion of autonomy into the philosophical debate requires a rejection of moral realism in all its forms. This move, which Stern labels ‘the argument from autonomy’ results in replacing moral realism with a constructivist account that regards the self-legislating moral subject as the source of all moral value. Moreover, it also presents the starting point for a central thread within post-Kantian ethics constituted by the concern for the philosophical puzzles to which the idea of the self-legislating moral subject gives rise.
A significant part of Stern’s book is devoted not only to refuting the standard story, but also to offering an alternative narrative altogether. Offering considerable textual evidence, Stern argues that Kant was not primarily targeting realist conceptions of value, but rather adopted a value realist position himself. He convincingly demonstrates that value realism as such need not be regarded a threat to moral autonomy. According to him, value realism and moral autonomy are compatible in Kant’s account in that the moral subject’s autonomous exercise of reason hinges on the recognition of — independently existing — values rather of than their construction. Instead of value realism Stern identifies an alternative polemical target of the argument from autonomy: a certain understanding of the nature of moral obligatoriness (cf. 41) that takes it to be based in God’s will and has become known as the ‘divine command’ account of moral obligation. On Stern’s reading, the problem of moral obligation, that is, the question of how to account for the binding force of moral laws, principles or duties, should be considered independently of the problem of moral value in Kant. Drawing on this distinction, Stern then suggests that the argument from autonomy aims to establish an account of moral obligation different from the divine command account. Kant’s account fundamentally rests on his distinction between the ‘holy’ and the human will: For the former morality does not possess any binding force because it lacks any non-moral inclinations and thus feels no constraint in acting morally (cf. 81). For a finite will such as ours, which — on the basis of also having non-moral inclinations — might very well be reluctant to act morally, what is right or wrong to do will present itself as a duty or obligation.
This separation of the problems of moral value and moral obligation allows Stern to ascribe what he calls a ‘hybrid view’ to Kant: whereas it is realist and externalist with regard to moral value, it is anti-realist and internalist with regard to moral obligation. This discussion, which is the linchpin of Stern’s book, is clearly among the most intriguing and convincing parts of it. Incorporating several attractive aspects of moral realism and anti-realism, as well as of internalism and externalism, it presents Kant’s entire account in a surprisingly favourable light.
In the second part of the book, Stern approaches Hegel’s ethical theory against the so far established background as well as by taking on a familiar story about Hegel’s critique of the ‘dualist’ character of the Kantian position. However, given that Stern ascribes the aforementioned ‘hybrid’ view of moral value and obligation to Kant, he takes this view to be less vulnerable to many of the well-known objections to the Kantian view — objections that are often considered to animate the history of post-Kantian ethics. Departing from this insight, he maintains that the ‘argument from dualism’ (229) first and foremost revolves around the issue of moral obligation. Stern here as well opposes the constructivist interpretation most famously advanced by Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard, according to which Hegel proposed what might be called a ‘collective self-legislation account’ as a solution to the various problems he identified in the Kantian view regarding the self-legislating subject as the ground of all moral value. According to Stern, on the contrary, Kant and Hegel share their realist commitments with regard to moral value (as much as their respective accounts may nevertheless differ), but depart on their respective understanding of the source of moral obligation. It is in this respect that Stern takes ‘the Hegelian move from the individual to the social’ to become crucial.
On the reading suggested by Stern, what accounts for the binding force of moral value is that a social command, that is, a demand on the part of the community a moral agent belongs to (cf. 158, 161), is in effect. Stern locates this social command account within the ‘Ethical Life’ section of the Philosophy of Right. What here provides the basis for our duties are the social institutions we participate in, as well as the laws and customs within a community. Stern attempts to defend his reading of Hegel’s theory of ‘Ethical Life’ as a social command theory of moral obligation against a rival interpretation most prominently advanced by Michael O. Hardimon, who takes our moral obligations to arise from our identification with the institutional roles we occupy. Contrary to Hardimon, Stern argues that it is the social pressure exerted on the moral agent by the community she belongs to rather than her identification with her institutional roles that according to Hegel accounts for the binding force of moral value.
It is, however, telling that Stern does not directly refute other readings of Hegel’s account of moral obligation. Rather, he sidesteps this issue by demonstrating that another thinker most commonly and influentially reputed to be Hegel’s intellectual heir with regard to the social role account of moral obligation, F. H. Bradley, ought to be regarded as a social command theorist. But even if this reading of Bradley’s account should be correct, I am not convinced that this alone may serve as sufficient evidence for the claim that the same is also true of the account that, undoubtedly, served as its model. One may grant that Hegel’s theory of ‘Ethical Life’ alone does not offer sufficient evidence to exclude either the ‘social role’ or the ‘social command’ reading of his account of moral obligation — and I take Stern’s very brief discussion of Hegel’s own account to hint at this difficulty. But, if one additionally takes into account the role that Hegel reserves for ‘Morality’ within ‘Ethical Life’, I think one can find some evidence that suggests a reading according to which Hegel at least partly views himself as in agreement with Kant on the matter of moral obligation.
To cite an example, in §135 of the Philosophy of Right Hegel states that it is ‘essential […] to emphasize the pure and unconditional self-determination of the will as the root of duty’, thus expressing his fundamental agreement with Kant on this matter. His disagreement with Kant lies elsewhere. What Kant is guilty of, according to Hegel, is ‘to cling on to a merely moral point of view without making the transition to Ethical Life’, a failing that results in ‘an empty formalism’. I think these remarks can be interpreted along the lines suggested in Stern’s discussion of Kant’s hybrid theory of moral value and obligation. On such a reading, our duties and obligations would be construed as the way in which the ‘living good’ (PR §142) which Hegel takes ‘Ethical Life’ to be presents itself to finite ethical subjects that, on the one hand, recognize the duties attached to their institutional roles and, on the other hand, may or may not be inclined to act according to these duties.
Further textual evidence that hints towards such a reading of Hegel’s account of moral obligation can be found within his re-introduction of the notion of ‘duty’ in the section on ‘Ethical Life’. Here Hegel remarks that the ‘substantial determinations’ (PR §148) of ‘Ethical Life’ — which he before identified with ‘laws and institutions which have being in and for themselves’ (PR §144) — present themselves as duties to an individual agent in virtue of the ‘relation’ in which she stands to them. This relation is one in which the individual agent is distinguished from the ‘substantial determinations’ of ‘Ethical Life’ as ‘that which is subjective and in itself undetermined or is determined in a particular way’. I take Hegel here to indicate that, vis-à-vis the norms that constitute ‘Ethical Life’, an individual agent’s will may either be undetermined in the sense that she can either refrain from whatever action she might be inclined to perform (cf. PR §5; PR §35) or be determined to perform a particular action that — as a matter of contingency — may or may not accord with the actions prescribed by these norms. The reason for this is that if an individual agent’s will is characterised by what Hegel calls ‘arbitrariness’ (Willkür - PR §15), this agent determines her will on the basis of inclinations that she, viewed from her own agential perspective, contingently happens to have. Because Hegel regards this contingency as an essential characteristic of the arbitrary will, there is no necessary connection between what is right or wrong and what we are contingently inclined to do. For such an agent, the norms the validity of which she recognises will present themselves as duties because, in virtue of also having conflicting inclinations, she might very well reluctantly perform the actions prescribed by these norms and thus feel constrained when doing so. This I take to be the central claim Hegel makes in his characterisation of duties as they are grounded in Ethical Life. Surprisingly however, Stern overlooks the specific role that Hegel grants the individual agent’s relation to the norms of Ethical Life in accounting for their binding force, albeit mentioning the passage in which Hegel characterizes this relation. Given this textual evidence, I am not convinced of the arguments Stern gives for his interpretation of Hegel as a ‘social command’ theorist of moral obligation. Nevertheless, particularly by locating Hegel’s account of moral obligation within a systematic discussion of the different ‘social’ accounts thereof, Stern’s interpretation remains highly instructive even for those readers who may disagree with it.
In the third part of Understanding Moral Obligation, Stern turns to Kierkegaard’s account of moral obligation. He interprets this account as a version of the ‘divine command’ theory against which he took Kant to have set up his ‘hybrid’ account. In doing so Stern agrees with other prominent interpreters of Kierkegaard such as C. Stephen Evans. His central original contribution to this line of interpretation, however, consists in offering a new perspective on how this theory is motivated by a critique of the accounts of moral obligation exemplified by those of Kant and Hegel. Seen from this perspective Kierkegaard offers an alternative to secular theories in that it is a distinctive account of obligation rather than a distinctive ethical theory. Stern emphasises that it is rather the latter than the former that Kierkegaard takes to depend on God’s command, thus distinguishing his reading from other, more strongly voluntaristic readings (cf. 173).
Stern presents Kierkegaard’s account as a challenge to any humanistic view claiming that moral obligation has its source in ourselves, independently of whether this source is taken to be the individual moral agent or a social community. But it is particularly in virtue of his critique of Hegel that Stern places Kierkegaard’s divine command account within the ‘dialectical circle’ of positions he considers the issue of moral obligation to revolve around.
Among the defects Kierkegaard identifies in Hegel’s social command theory, one is of particular relevance to Stern’s interpretation: the ‘ethical undemandingness’ of Hegel’s Sittlichkeit or the ‘moral complacency’ (200) of those who subscribe to such a social command account of moral obligation. This ‘argument from complacency’ (247) starts from the diagnosis that Hegel’s notion of ‘Ethical Life’ boils down to an ‘ethic of fulfilling one’s socially determined duties’ (247). Kierkegaard confronts such a view with the Christian commandment to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ in order to highlight that morality is more demanding on us than a social command theory of moral obligation could account for. Further, he claims that this demandingness can only be accommodated ‘if we think we are being asked to act in that way by God, whose capacity to judge, assist and forgive us differs from that of any other kind of obligating source.’ (204) But within the context of ‘Ethical Life’, we can either only make sense of the love commandment at the cost of watering it down by arbitrarily tailoring it to fit our own capacities as moral agents or abandon such a central moral notion altogether.
In his interpretation of Kierkegaard’s positive account of moral obligation Stern adopts John Hare’s notion of the ‘moral gap’ in order to emphasise what Kierkegaard takes to be characteristic of moral obligation as such: the possibility that moral demands transcend our capacities as moral agents (cf. 206). Once we grant that this gap exists we are required to somehow provide an account of the means that help us deal with the fact that something ‘is demanded of us even though we cannot really expect to abide by it.’ (216) Stern suggests that for Kierkegaard ‘divine assistance and forgiveness’ (215) are those very means. Thus charitably highlighting the motivations for adopting a divine command theory vis-à-vis the weaknesses of other, humanistic accounts of moral obligation is in my view the foremost virtue of Stern’s discussion of Kierkegaard’s take on this matter.
In the concluding section of the book Stern presents an overview of each of the authors’ central arguments while confronting them with the rejoinders that can be made from the position of their respective targets. This section nicely exemplifies the virtues that can be ascribed to Stern’s study as a whole. By presenting the views of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard on the problem of moral obligation not merely as stations within an original historical narrative, but also as systematic alternatives closely linked to one another by virtue of each addressing their respective opponents’ shortcomings, Stern offers a lucid and comprehensive account of what is at stake for whatever kind of position one may favour. I am convinced by his concluding claim that, although there may be no grounds to take a final stand on this matter, there nevertheless are grounds to believe that the problem of moral obligation is not merely of historical interest. There is no doubt that the original interpretations Stern offers of each of the authors discussed in this admirable study as well as of the philosophical concerns underlying the history of modern ethical thought breaks new ground and thus raises the bar for further research on its subject matter.
