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The Reciprocity Thesis in Kant and Hegel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
Abstract
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Following Henry Allison's terminology in his book Kant's Theory of Freedom I shall take the reciprocity thesis to be the thesis that morality and freedom are reciprocal concepts. To be free, the reciprocity thesis claims, is to be subject to the demands of morality; to be subject to the demands of morality is to be free.
Despite quite different understandings of the domains of ethics and morality, Kant and Hegel both affirm versions of the reciprocity thesis. Kant's best known statement of the thesis can be found at the beginning of Chapter III of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: “a free will and a will under moral laws”, he asserts, “are one and the same. Consequently if freedom of the will is presupposed, morality, together with its principle, follows by mere analysis of the concept of freedom”. This assumption of reciprocity is an explicit premise in the subsequent argument that, since a rational agent must take himself to be free, he must consider himself subject to the moral law. And it reappears again in the Critique of Practical Reason's reversal of this argument, which claims that, since a rational agent has a sense of himself as subject to the moral law (the so-called “fact of reason”), he therefore has a consciousness of his freedom. Finally, it is worth noting that something like the reciprocity thesis underlies much of the argument of Chapters I and II of the Groundwork as well as the opening arguments of the second Critique: for in these texts Kant frequently moves directly from the proposition that the moral will must be determined independently of all of its desires and inclinations (it is free) to the conclusion that it must be subject to the moral law.
Information
- Type
- Hegel and Kant
- Information
- Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 17 , Issue 1: number 33 , Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 54 - 69
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1996
Footnotes
1 Allison, Henry E Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Chapter 11.
2 One difference between the Kantian and Hegelian formulations of the thesis is that the former identifies freedom with the capacity to follow ethical requirements whereas the latter identifies it with actually exercising this capacity. On Kant's view that freedom is a capacity, see Allison, , Kant's Theory of Freedom, pp 94–99 ; and Hill, Thomas E Jr, “Kant's Argument For The Rationality of Moral Conduct”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1985), pp 11–12 . For a comparison of Kant and Hegel on this issue, see Wood, Allen W, Hegel's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) p 39 . In what follows, nothing, so far as I can see, turns on this difference in formulation.
3 Kant, Immanuel Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by Paton, H J as The Moral Law (London: Unwin Hyman, 1948), Royal Prussian Academy p 447 .
4 Kant, Immanuel Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Beck, Lewis White (New York: Macmillan, 1956), Royal Prussian Academy pp 29-30 and 42–50 .
5 Eg at Groundwork, pp 400-02.
6 Elements of the Philosophy of Right (PR), translated by Nisbet, H B, edited by Wood, Allen W (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §133A.
7 PR §§ 148 and 149 respectively.
8 For discussion, see Allison, , Kant's Theory of Freedom, pp 94–99 , and Hill, “Kant's Argument For the Rationality of Moral Conduct”.
9 See, for instance, Hegel: Werke Theorie Werkausgabe (Werke) (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Volume X, §475.
10 See, for instance, PR § 124.
11 Eg Werke, Volume XII, pp 216, 386, 403, 524 ; Die Philosophie des Rechts: Die Mitschriften Wannenmann (Heidelberg 1817-1818) und Homeyer (Berlin 1818-1819), edited by Ilting, K-H ((Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1983), pp 38, 211 ; Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie, Volume IV, edited by Ilting, K-H (Stuttgart: Fromman Verlag, 1974), p 80 .
12 I defend at length this interpretation of Hegel's conception of freedom in my DPhil. Dissertation, Hegel's Idea of Freedom: An Interpretation and Defense, submitted to the University of Oxford in 01 1996 .
13 Eg at PR §135.
14 For sympathetic discussions of Hegel's objections, see Walsh, W H Hegelian Ethics (London, Macmillan, 1969), Chapter 4; Taylor, Charles, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p 371 ; and Smith, Steven B, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp 73–75 . For recent attempts to defend Kant against the charge that the moral law is empty, see Korsgaard, Christine, “Kant's Formula of Universal Law”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 66 (1985); O'Neill, Onora, Acting on Principle: An Essay on Kantian Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), Chapter 5; Wildt, Andreas, Autonomie und Anerkennung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), pp 84–96 ; and Wood, Allen, Hegel's Ethical Thought, pp 155–61. My discussion most closely follows Korsgaard.
15 This is how Korsgaard interprets Kant's test in “Kant's Formula of Universal Law”. Even if Korsgaard's interpretation of how Kant understood the categorical imperative test is incorrect it remains the case that there is a non-vacuous Kantian understanding of the test. This is damaging to Hegel's critique, which is aimed at a whole approach to ethics (which he terms Moralität as opposed to Sittlichkeit) and not merely at Kant's own position.
16 Korsgaard, Christine, “Morality as Freedom”, in Kant's Practical Philosophy Reconsidered, edited by Yovel, Yirmiyuhu (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), p 28 ; cf. Wood, Allen, Hegel's Ethical Thought, pp 161–67, Pippin, Robert, “Idealism and Agency in Kant and Hegel”, Journal of Philosophy (1991), p 539 , and Taylor, , Hegel, pp 373, 559–62.
17 Taylor, , Hegel, p 373 .
18 Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie, Volume IV, p 118 .
19 As Wood, , Hegel's Ethical Thought, p 163 , has suggested, Werke, Volume VIII, §54 also seems to manifest an awareness of this contradiction; see also Werke, Volume XX, pp 367–68.
20 Groundwork, pp 446-47, and Critique of Practical Reason, pp 28-9, respectively.
21 Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom, Chapter 11; and “On a Presumed Gap in the Derivation of the Categorical Imperative”, Philosophical Topics, Vol 19, No. 1 (1991), p 10 .
22 Critique of Practical Reason, p 29.
23 Obviously, this is just one possible line of criticism that might be pursued here. A second would be to argue that (1) is incoherent because it wrongly supposes that there are what Bernard Williams has called “external reasons”, that is, reasons that an agent might have independently of his given desires, inclinations, commitments, projects, and so on (what Williams calls his “Motivational set”). See Williams, , “Internal and External Reasons”, in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Nothing in the argument of this paper assumes either that there are or that there are not external reasons.
24 See Critique of Practical Reason, p 27, and Groundwork, p 402.
25 Here I follow Wood, , Hegel's Ethical Thought, pp 161–67. See also Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom, Chapter 11, and “On a Presumed Gap”, pp 3-5; Hill, , “Kant's Argument for the Rationality of Moral Conduct”, p 19 ; and Bittner, Rüdiger, What Reason Demands, translated by Talbot, Theodore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p 85n187 .
26 Wood, , Hegel's Ethical Thought, pp 164–65.
27 Allison, , “On a Presumed Gap”, p 12 .
28 Allison, , “On a Presumed Gap”, p 12 .
29 Korsgaard, , “Morality as Freedom”, pp 29–31 .
30 Korsgaard, , “Morality as Freedom”, p 30 .
31 Hegel himself joins Korsgaard in attributing the idea to Kant: see Werke, Volume XII, pp 524–25, and Werke, Volume XX, pp 366–67.
32 The last three quotes are from PR §21, Die Milschriften Wannenmann und Homeyer, p 39, and PR §21A, respectively.
33 See, for example, Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, edited by Hoffmeister, J (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1955). pp 56, 183, and PR §§ 26A, 57.
34 Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, p 56.
35 It seems to me that Charles Taylor is making a similar point in Hegel, p 93: “Surely there must be some goal which is taken as the starting point, even if everything that is done is determined by strict reasoning from this basic aim. For otherwise how can reasoning by itself come to any conclusion as to what action to take? But then is this basic goal not simply given? The answer is, in a sense, yes. But not in a sense which need negate the radical freedom of Geist. For Geist can be thought to have as its basic aim simply that spirit, or rational subjectivity, be; and the rest can be thought to follow of necessity…But then the only input into this skein of rational necessity would be the goal, let rational subjectivity be. Once this ‘decision’ is taken, the rest flows of itself. But it cannot be thought of as a limitation on the freedom of Geist that this ‘decision’ is preformed. That subjectivity should be is not a limit on its freedom, but the very basis of it; and that it should be rational, ie, expressed in conceptual consciousness, is thought by Hegel to belong to the very essence of subjectivity”.
36 There would be a number of problems with such a conception of rational self-determination: (1) the “external reasons” problem mentioned briefly in Section 3 above; (2) the problem that such a conception of freedom seems to blur the distinction between determination by reason and determination by self; and (3) the various problems attending the idea of a “noumenal” realm.
37 Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie, Volume IV, p 79 .
38 See, for instance, PR §§ 7 and 24, and Werke, Volume X, §469A.
39 Science of Logic, translated by Miller, A V (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), p 739 .
40 Werke, Volume VIII, §§ 55 and 57.
41 Werke, Volume VIII, § 57.
42 Kenneth Westphal also suggests that Hegel's “Argument rests on an unspoken principle much like Kant's principle of rational willing: Whoever rationally wills an end is rationally committed to willing the necessary means or conditions for achieving that end”. See Westphal, , “Context and structure of Philosophy of Right”, in Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed Beiser, Frederick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p 247 .
43 I am indebted to Michael Rosen for suggesting this term to me.
44 Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, p 55.
45 I am grateful to Jessica Brown, Michael Rosen, and the participants in the Wolfson College Philosophy Society, and Nuffield College Political Theory Workshop, for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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