Sussman Authority of Humanity

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The Authority of HumanityAuthor(s): by David SussmanReviewed work(s):Source: Ethics, Vol. 113, No. 2 (January 2003), pp. 350-366Published by: The University of Chicago Press

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Ethics 113 (January 2003): 350–366᭧ 2003 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/2003/11302-0006$10.00

350

The Authority of Humanity*

David Sussman

In “The Value of Rational Nature,” Donald Regan challenges a centralargument of much recent Kantian moral philosophy.1 For such contem-porary Kantians as Christine Korsgaard and Allen Wood, the heart of Kant’s ethics is the claim that our capacities for rational deliberationand choice are unconditionally valuable. These Kantians hold that for

Kant, the unconditional worth of our rational nature or “humanity” ispresupposed by our ability to act for the sake of any values at all. Ac-cording to this approach, morality is grounded in the norms that expressa proper recognition of rational nature’s preeminent value as the sinequa non of all possible value. We are supposedly committed to thesenorms insofar as we aspire to any coherent and nondelusive experienceof practical deliberation and choice. On this view, moral skepticism may remain a minimally coherent philosophical option, but only at the cost of a thoroughgoing nihilism about value in general.2

Regan does not deny that our rational nature has real value. Heeven accepts that this value may be an essential aspect of all value what-soever. Regan allows that appreciative engagement by a rational subject may indeed be a necessary part of any truly good organic whole. 3 He

challenges only the claim that rational nature or rational choice is thesole original value from which the significance of all other concerns isderived. Regan’s central objection is that this position is wildly implau-sible, if not downright incoherent. He argues that the exercise of rational

* Special thanks to Marcia Baron and two anonymous referees for this journal, as well as Harvard’s Center for Ethics and the Professions for fellowship support this year.

1. Donald H. Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature,” Ethics 112 (2002): 267–91.2. Christine Korsgaard, “Kant’s Formula of Humanity,” “Aristotle and Kant on the

Source of Value,” and “Two Distinctions in Goodness,” all in Creating the Kingdom of Ends

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 106–33, 225–49, 249–75, and The

Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 122; Allen Wood,Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 124–32, and“Humanity as End in Itself,” in Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals , ed. Paul Guyer

(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), pp. 165–87.3. Regan, p. 289.

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Sussman The Authority of Humanity 351

choice can itself have worth only through its relations to distinct andconceptually prior values, values to which such choice should be re-sponsive. Rational choice is not good in and of itself, but only insofaras it is a capacity through which we can shape our lives in accordance

with some more basic good. For Regan, to treat rational nature as thesole original value is only to fetishize the pointless spontaneity of the“heroic existentialist.”4

Regan rejects the radical subjectivism and projectivism about valuethat takes our projects to be good simply because we have chosen them:“that choice requires standards, is the core of my complaint against theKantian.”5 The position that Regan attributes to Kant is indeed unap-pealing. Who could deny that there are some pursuits, such as body-

building or counting blades of grass, that are inherently worthless andremain so whether anyone clearheadedly chooses them? Who coulddeny that science or child rearing are by their very nature especially appropriate and reasonable objects of our concern, even were no oneto care about them? When we try to figure out whether some pursuit is worthwhile, we normally focus on the character of the activity itself,not on ourselves and our attitudes toward it. When I argue with thebodybuilder, I do not refer to his desires or to mine, but to all the thingsthat make bodybuilding patently ridiculous. If the bodybuilder can only reply by appealing to his own tastes and preferences, he has already conceded my point.

This subjectivism about value appears inconsistent with the initialcharacterization of our practical experience from which the Kantian

argument proceeds. For Regan, the core Kantian argument takes thisform:

1. We cannot act without the belief that our projects are valuable.For practical purposes, then, we can say that we know our projectsare valuable.

2. But we also see that our projects are not valuable unconditionally;they are not valuable just because of what they are.

3. The condition of their value is our choosing them.

4. Therefore, we ourselves must be valuable unconditionally. Only thus can we be the condition of other values.6

This argument does sound very much like the “regress arguments” that

4. Ibid., p. 278.5. Ibid., p. 274.6. Ibid., p. 271.







352 Ethics January 2003

Korsgaard and Wood develop.7

The approach has attracted much crit-icism for the move from claims 3 to 4. This inference assumes that if something is the unconditioned condition of value, it must itself haveunconditional value. Regan is willing to allow this problematic move.He also accepts claim 1: that all valuing presupposes its objects to beof objective worth. What Regan attacks are claims 2 and 3, which to-gether claim that something is of worth only insofar as it is the object of some minimally rational choice.

So read, the premises seem only to show that the Kantian’s con-ception of value is incoherent. On the one hand, we are told that allrational choice presupposes its objects to be valuable independent of our thinking them so, such that our choices are accountable to someobjective rational standards. But claims 2 and 3 go on to tell us that this necessary presupposition is itself necessarily false. Nothing can have

value simply because of what it is, but only insofar as it is considered valuable by a rational agent. If so, then what the Kantian argument reveals is not the unconditional worth of humanity but rather a deepconfusion in our own experience of valuing. To seriously value some-thing, we must take it to be of some independent merit, but such merit can only come from our own evaluative attitudes and, thus, could neverbe truly independent.

Regan argues that if rational choice is what the Kantian takes it tobe, it is hard to see how there could be any value in it at all. Regancontends that if we do not presuppose any prior Moorean goods, rationalchoice can be little more than “arbitrary self-launching.” Such self-

launching could not really be evaluated as better or worse, correct orincorrect.8 At best, we might so launch ourselves and then retrospectively affirm the trajectory that we have taken. But we would be in bad faithto take the fact that we had committed ourselves in this way as the very

justification for so doing. As Regan argues, it is difficult to see what might be valuable about such self-launching, or how such normatively unconstrained behavior could even count as choice at all.9 In retreat,

we might cast radical spontaneity itself as a primitive, unanalyzable good.But while such a good would be afflicted with all the epistemologicaland motivational problems of Moorean realism, it would also suffer thespecial drawback of having almost no intuitive appeal.

Regan is surely right that there is something bizarre, if not inco-

7. Korsgaard, “Kant’s Formula of Humanity”; Wood, “Humanity as End in Itself.” InThe Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard concludes: “Kant saw that we take things to be im-portant because they are important to us—and he concluded that we must therefore takeourselves to be important” (p. 122).

8. Regan, p. 275.9. Ibid., p. 288.








herent, in the thought that objective value could be created purely by individual exercises of rational choice. Few worries are more familiaror compelling than the thought that we have devoted ourselves to some-thing shallow, trite, or just plain stupid, which might remain so despiteour choice of it. Rational choice, insofar as it is to count as interestingly rational, must be sensitive to some such concerns. If so, then such choicecannot itself be the sole origin of value. Here I have no dispute withRegan. What I do deny is that on its most plausible reconstruction, theKantian argument for humanity aims or needs to show that rationalchoice is the only original or nonderivative kind of value.10

Admittedly, Kant sometimes suggests that it is through rationalchoice that all value comes into the world, and in this respect Korsgaardand Wood are true to the text. However, this conclusion depends not

just on the regress argument proper but on Kant’s generally Humean views about the nature and limits of nonmoral practical reasoning. Con-temporary Kantians should dissociate themselves from these implausible

views, which are also in tension with the rest of Kant’s moral psychology.11

Fortunately, the main thrust of Kant’s regress argument is independent of these further Humean claims. The argument is sufficient to establishthe unconditional value of humanity, without committing Kant or theKantian to any very specific views about the sources of value in general.

I

For Regan, the regress argument begins with the premise that (1) “wecannot act without the belief that our projects are valuable.” Here weare told that something is valuable just to the extent that “there is someaspect of it that makes [some] pro-attitude appropriate [toward it].”12

In thinking our projects valuable, we make a claim to objectivity, takingthose projects to merit our responses in a way independent of ouractually so responding. On a weak reading, this move is unobjectionable.If the value of my project is to justify or rationalize my choice of it,there must be some possibility of my being mistaken about its worth. If my project has value simply as a logical consequence of the fact that Ihave chosen it, such value can hardly serve to justify this very choice.

However, Regan sees premise 1 as involving a claim to objectivity that goes beyond providing for the possibility of mistake. That possibility only requires that I take my ends to be valuable independently of my

now finding them to be so. In addition to such weak objectivity, Regan

also thinks I must presuppose my ends to be valuable regardless of whether they are or would ever be valued by anyone at all. Such value

10. Ibid., p. 268.11. See my discussion in Sec. VI below.12. Regan, p. 268.








could only be found in ends that are intrinsically good, or “valuable just because of what they are.”13 Regan concludes that from its very first premise, the Kantian’s argument supports only a regress to a kind of Moorean realism about the good. The Kantian’s own characterizationof our practical experience supposedly rules out any hope that the originof value could be found in the attitudes of rational subjects simply assuch.

Regan worries that this reply is too easy (he finds it “embarrassingly brief”),14 and he is right to be anxious. In assuming that the objectivity

we are after in premise 1 can only be sustained by Moorean intrinsic values, Regan begs the question at hand. In the regress argument, theKantian started from the thought that rational choice presupposes somekind of objectivity in value, independent of the particular choice in

question, to which that choice is to be held accountable. Regan thenintroduces a false dichotomy: that value is either (a ) thoroughly inde-pendent of the nature of valuing agents or (b ) completely derived fromthe actual attitudes of individual agents. Regan thinks that since wecannot sustain any interesting sense of objectivity with b , we must adopt a . With a , we conclude that objective value must have a basis that doesnot depend on anything about the character of valuing agents. Yet theKantian is trying to show that there are significant normative standardsto which the very idea of rational agency commits us. If so, then there

would be norms of choice that, while prior to any particular agent’sattitudes, would nevertheless be bound up with the metaphysics of agency itself. Ultimately, the Kantian may or may not be able to makeher case for such standards. However, in assuming that only Mooreanrealism can sustain the minimal objectivity presupposed by premise 1,Regan has already concluded that this project has failed. Yet it is just the viability of this project that is here at issue.

II

Regan’s further criticism of the regress argument misses its mark be-cause it confuses what he calls “intrinsic value” with the Kantian “end-in-itself.” For Regan, something is of intrinsic value to the extent that its nonrelational properties make some proattitude appropriate to holdtoward it. In Groundwork II, the central text for the regress argument,Kant focuses on the concept of an end-in-itself and argues that our ownrational nature is the only fit candidate for such an end. This concept

of an end-in-itself is importantly different from Regan’s understandingof intrinsic value. Kant begins the argument by asking, “But supposethere were something the existence of which in itself has an absolute worth,

13. Ibid., p. 272.14. Ibid., p. 274.








something which as an end in itself could be a ground of determinatelaws.”15 As Kant suggests, the value of a true end-in-itself would not merely make some proattitude appropriate to it. Rather, such a value

would be the basis of objective practical laws, which any rational agent must obey regardless of her other attitudes or concerns. For Kant, some-thing would be an end-in-itself only if it is rationally necessary for allagents to be committed to it. He argues that if there are indeed any

valid moral laws, there must be some such ends, because any categor-ically binding laws would effectively define a commitment that any agent must have insofar as she is rational.

Regan’s understanding of intrinsic value leaves out the element of practical necessity that is of central importance to Kant. After all, some-thing could be of intrinsic value in Regan’s sense without being thebasis of any practical necessity at all. Let us grant that scientific knowl-edge is intrinsically valuable—that it is worthy of pursuit, simply becauseof what it is. This fact does not in itself show that it is rationally incum-bent upon me or anyone else actually to pursue such knowledge. Theremay well be other intrinsic goods, such as beauty or pleasure, that I canonly effectively pursue by neglecting science. It does not even follow from the fact that something is an appropriate object of concern that I am under rational obligation to care about it. I may sometimes, without error, neglect what I know to be of value even without having anythingbetter (or equal) to put in its place. Many people are perfectly appro-priate objects of love or devotion, even though I am under no rationalobligation to love any of them. Many works of art are especially appro-

priate objects of our attention, but it need not be a mistake to fail tobe interested in any of them.

There are good things that we may, without rational fault, declineto care about when full appreciation of their value still leaves us cold.

Whether and how we should care about some things often depends, inpart, on whether we desire to do so. Such desire is best thought of asa kind of immediate affective engagement by the merits of something,more akin to love or fascination than a brute impulse or urge.16 Suchengagement is not itself a reason-giving consideration, but a way of beingrelated to such considerations that bears on how those reasons properly address the subject. As Regan observes, my reasons to care about Ca-ravaggio’s St. Jerome depend on facts about the painting, not facts about me. What does depend on me, and my affective state, is whether the

15. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals , trans. Mary Gregor (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4:428. (Page references to Kant’s works are to

volume and page of the Prussian Academy edition.)16. I take this to be the most hopeful way of reading Kant’s distinction between an

incentive and a mere inclination.








objective merits of St. Jerome present me with mere practical possibility,a compelling suggestion, or a kind of “volitional necessity” that I cannot ignore without violence to myself.17 In all these cases, the basic reasons,reflecting the independent merits of the painting, remain the sameregardless of my attitudes. What shifts is the response that those reasonscall for from me in particular.18

Admittedly, Kant himself does not clearly distinguish the objectively good from the rationally necessary. In Groundwork II, he invites confusionby claiming that humanity, as the sole end-in-itself, is the only fully “objective” end and the only thing that is of absolute worth. Theseremarks suggest that all other goods are of merely subjective or relative

value, having only the importance that we take them to have. But we

should keep in mind here that Kant considers something to be goodonly insofar as actions for its sake are “practically necessary.”19 Kant’sentire discussion of value is confined to the domain of the rationally obligatory. Regan’s more generic sense of value or goodness nevercomes into play, despite an unfortunate similarity in terminology. Kant can thus consider humanity to be the only objective good, in his re-stricted sense, without having to deny that there are other things that

we have reason to pursue simply in virtue of their intrinsic qualities.Humanity can be the sole end-in-itself, without having to be the only underived or intrinsic value in Regan’s more capacious sense. Nothingin Kant’s conclusion, then, need conflict with the commonsense valuepluralism that Regan advocates.

17. See Harry Frankfurt, “The Importance of What We Care About,” in his The Im-

portance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 80–95,and “On Caring,” in his Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 155–80.

18. Here I depart from an otherwise similar line of argument in Korsgaard’s “TwoDistinctions in Goodness,” in which Korsgaard argues against Moorean realism on thegrounds that it cannot do justice to the way our reasons for action depend on our “naturalinterest.” (She rightly rejects the appeal to “organic wholes” as a piece of unilluminatingad hoccery.) I agree that our reasons at least partially depend on our desires and interest in something. Yet here “desire” and “interest” must be understood as already makingreference to the independent worth of their objects, rather than as rationally inscrutableimpulses. As Warren Quinn argues, a completely unrationalized impulse to turn on radioshardly gives an agent any reason to do so (“Putting Rationality in Its Place,” in his Morality

and Action [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], pp. 210–28). This impulse

does not give her a reason even if there is in fact something good about its object (say,if the radio already happens to be tuned to an excellent music station). Only when ourdesire takes the form of cognitively freighted appreciation or engagement does it makean immediate difference to what the agent has good reason to do. Natural interest doesnot give us reasons that are prior to the merits of their objects, even if the full significanceof these reasons may depend on the possibility of such interest.

19. Kant, Groundwork, 4:412.








III

Kant never develops a fully satisfactory account of nonmoral value andmotivation. While he recognizes that some interests quite properly de-pend on the attitudes of the subject, Kant tends to assimilate all suchattitudes to a generic notion of inclination. Kant takes such inclinationsto have no interesting internal rational structure, individuating themonly with respect to their objects and motivational strength.20 In thesecond Critique , Kant even seems to suggest that pleasure and the avoid-ance of pain are the only possible objects of immediate nonmoral con-cern.21 When discussing prudence, Kant presents happiness to be just the satisfaction of all our inclinations, rationally systematized in a way that he never specifies. Kant does not develop the notion of a generic

nonnecessitating reason for action, of something good to do that neednot be something we are rationally required to do.22

I have no wish to defend Kant’s general account of nonmoral in-terest. Fortunately, the main thrust of the regress argument can beextricated from this part of his philosophy. Kant frames the regressargument purely in terms of ends that are practically necessary, ratherthan those that are objectively good in the broader sense. He aims first to show that humanity is the only plausible candidate for such a nec-essary end. Kant then tries to show why any rational agent must pre-suppose that there is something that is an end-in-itself: that is, why wemust consider ourselves bound by any substantive, necessitating con-cerns at all. The load-bearing features of this argument are separablefrom Kant’s more worrisome claims about inclination, self-love, and thenature of happiness. The regress argument can avoid Regan’s worries,although its ultimate success will turn on questions about the will’sfreedom that go beyond the scope of this reply.

To reconstruct the argument, we again start with the premise that in choice, we consider our ends to be objectively valuable. We take the

20. Kant did in his later works move toward a richer account of inclination by distin-guishing passions and mere affects (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary

J. Gregor [The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974], Ak. 265–76). Unlike affects, passions do have sub-stantial internal rational structure, although Kant still considers them all to be forms of illusion and perverted reasoning.

21. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1997), 5:23–25.

22. Kant does approach something like this distinction when he distinguishes betweenpractical counsels and practical commands in the second Critique , but he does not developthe suggestion (ibid., 5:36). Kant also comes near this distinction in his understanding of the imperfect duties, which are concerns that we are morally and rationally obliged tocare about, but to a degree and in a way that is largely indeterminate. Hampered by thepoverty of his general understanding of nonmoral interest, Kant does not develop any corresponding category of the nonmoral good.








intrinsic qualities of our ends to make our choice of them appropriate. Yet in successful choosing, we do more than just express some appro-priate proattitude toward our ends. We rationally commit ourselves tothese ends. Even though nothing may have been rationally incumbent upon us before we chose, we are now rationally obliged to take whatevermeans are necessary to these new ends of ours, so long as they remainour ends. Before I decide to go see St. Jerome, I have only a weak reasonto get on the one bus that goes to the art museum (there’s somethingto be said in favor of getting on the bus, in that there’s something tobe said for seeing the exhibit). But once I decide to see St. Jerome, it isnow rationally incumbent upon me to take that bus, insofar as it is theonly way to get to the exhibit.

Perhaps at the bus stop my old bus phobia flares up. Without re-considering or changing my mind, I fail to get on the bus. Here I haveacted irrationally, knowingly going against a binding imperative of rea-son. Of course, in light of my fear of buses I might have reevaluatedmy plan and decided not to go the art museum at all. In this case norational imperatives would attach, and I would manifest no rationalfailing. However, some story like this need not apply simply because I

voluntarily avoided the bus. It is possible that I remain fully and sincerely committed to seeing St. Jerome despite my failure of nerve at the busstop. If such failure counts as irrational, then it seems that rationalchoice has the power to impose practical necessities on me where there

were none before.Such necessity goes beyond the sort of consistency conditions we

impose upon ourselves when we come to a belief. When I intend to E,I bring myself under rational obligation to seek out and perform what-ever is a requisite means to E. I also bring myself under obligation toseek out and perform some acts that, while not necessary to E, arepotentially sufficient to bring E about. In intending E, I must do what-ever is necessary and at least something sufficient to attain that end.There is no analogous necessity in the theoretical case. Some propo-sition p may entail or provide strong evidence for all sorts of otherclaims. But I am not under any rational obligation, simply in virtue of believing p, to figure out and believe anything else that p entails orsupports. Belief is of course subject to rational constraints, such as thosethat require us to believe whatever is obviously entailed by our current

beliefs or that prohibit believing anything manifestly inconsistent.

23

Nev-ertheless, coming to a belief does not, absent any further cognitive goals,necessarily commit us to any further theoretical projects. In contrast,forming an intention does rationally commit us to some ongoing prac-

23. The Paradox of the Preface, however, may make us wonder about even this.








tical tasks. Rational choice is thus a ground of imperatives in a way that rational belief is not.

So far, the regress argument shows that in our most basic practicalexperience, we recognize our rational nature to be an authority that can make something that is good to do into something we must do.24

Such recognition is not at all adventitious: we could hardly make senseof our own agency without assuming this minimal authority to imposerational imperatives on ourselves. Rational nature thus emerges as anend-in-itself. Yet the Kantian needs to show not just that rational natureis one such end but that it is the only end-in-itself. How can we ruleout, a priori, that there may be some substantive concerns that, at least once they reach a certain degree, are as rationally necessitating as ourown acts of commitment? Perhaps if St. Jerome were beautiful enough,

we would be just as obliged to go see it as we are to take the bus once we have decided to go the museum. Kant rules out such possibilities by invoking the general claim that the “material content” of all nonmoralconcerns is determined purely by psychological causation. Kant hereretains the Humean view that the appeal of any substantive concern is

just a matter of the thought of it evoking a certain inclination in us.Since the object of such an inclination is rationally accidental, it couldhardly ever qualify as an end-in-itself simply by being such an object of a desire.

Kant’s official reply here turns on some of the more implausiblefeatures of his treatment of nonmoral interest and would be questionbegging against the Moorean. But we can make Kant’s point without

the troublesome excess baggage. To do so, we can exploit a plausibleconnection between rationality and intelligibility. If some concern isrationally binding, we might well expect a creature that is completely indifferent to that concern to be unintelligible to us in some important respect. There should be some important dimension of its being that

we cannot make any sense of. This is not to say that there need beanything particularly unintelligible about any particular episode of suchirrationality. Nothing makes more sense to me than the weakness of willprovoked by a nice slice of cheesecake or the prospect of a few morehours’ sleep. While I may often violate instrumental or prudential im-peratives, I need not be utterly indifferent to them, or unintelligible inmy weakness. What is unintelligible is the wanton, who simply does not

24. This authority is not merely epistemic, as it would be if our rational faculties were just particularly reliable guides to what it is good to do. They are that, of course. Inaddition, the exercise of rational choice can create practical imperatives even when allthe objective merits of the competing options fail to determine any choice as necessary.Such authority is not just a form of expertise but a fundamental normative power that

we can exercise toward ourselves, as a kind of self-legislation.








care about sticking to his putative commitments in the face of any com-peting temptation.

The Moorean may suggest that, along with our rational nature,there are some other concerns that are rationally incumbent upon us:perhaps beauty, knowledge, or physical pleasure. To test these sugges-tions, we might consider a creature who is and has always been thor-oughly indifferent to some such concern. Would such a person seem,not just weird, but alien to the point of incomprehensibility? 25 Would

we lose any sense of how to “go on” with him as a fellow agent andinterlocutor? We would suffer such estrangement in the case of the

wanton, who does not at all recognize the authority of his own rationalnature. However, for other values it seems that we could acknowledgethe agent’s strange blind spot but still understand him perfectly well inpractical contexts in which that value was not at stake. It may be a sadthing to have no sense of humor or appreciation of sports, but suchfailings do not completely alienate us from those afflicted with them.

Kant himself might conclude that such agents are not even makingevaluative mistakes but simply failing to have a desire that tends to beproduced in the rest of us.26 We needn’t follow Kant this far. Havingdistinguished the good from the practically necessary, we can say that the agent who is utterly unconcerned with sports may indeed be failingto appreciate a real value that should inform his deliberations. Never-theless, his failure does not undermine our ability to make sense of himas an agent in general or to imaginatively enter into his deliberativeperspective. He is at worst obtuse or benighted, not insane or hopelessly

alien. We would then have grounds to conclude that the value he dis-dains, while truly important, still falls short of being an end-in-itself.

Our ordinary experience of choice reveals that we implicitly rec-ognize our capacities for rational commitment to have a kind of uniqueauthority over our reasons for action. However, attributing such au-thority to rational choice does not make it uncriticizable. Such choicehas authority only insofar as it is rational. Choice must be at least min-imally informed by and responsive to the independent merits of itspossible objects. Animals and insane people may make choices in somesense. Yet insofar as these subjects are unable to consider or act in light of the real merits of their options, their capacities for choice commandno such authority. Nor need we say that rational choice is so authoritativethat it can create real practical necessities out of any material whatsoever.

25. For a similar suggestion, see Korsgaard, “The Normativity of Instrumental Reason,”in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (Oxford: Clarendon,1997), p. 240, and “Two Distinctions in Goodness,” pp. 270–73.

26. Except, perhaps, insofar as such concerns can be shown to have a prudential ormoral dimension.








I have argued that rational choice alone can convert something that would otherwise be only reasonable to do into something we must do.This does not entail that such choice could make a law out of somethingthat is otherwise thoroughly bad to do. Tony Soprano may have rationally chosen his practical identity as a mafioso, but this does not entail that he has any real reason to engage in the requisite whacking andclipping.27

IV

This version of the regress argument shows that we implicitly recognizethe authority of rational nature as the source not of goodness, but of law.28 However, the argument does not yet show us how to interpret thisclaim to authority. The authority of humanity as an end-in-itself might

still be read in a purely agent-relative way. On such an interpretation,an agent would have to recognize the authority of her own rationalnature over only her own choices. Yet the regress argument equally admits of a broader, agent-neutral reading of the authority of humanity.

27. Cf. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, pp. 183–84, 256–58.28. In “The Normativity of Instrumental Reason,” Korsgaard develops a line of thought

similar to what I have been arguing here. However, shetakesher approach to becontinuous with her earlier works, where she concluded that humanity is the only original source of value (p. 246, n. 61). Yet in “The Normativity of Instrumental Reason” it is hard to seehow Korsgaard moves past the claim that humanity is the source of law to this strongerclaim that humanity is the source of all goodness. The transition seems to involve anequivocation: “For the instrumental principle to provide you with a reason, you must thinkthat the fact that you will an end is a reason for the end . It’s not exactly that there has to

be a further reason; it’s just that you must take the act of your own will to be normativefor you. And of course this cannot mean merely that you are going to pursue the end. It means that your willing the end gives it a normative status for you, that your willing the end

in a sense makes it good ” (ibid., pp. 245–46; my emphasis). How might willing an end makeit good? As I have argued, in willing an end, an agent acquires a stronger reason to do

whatever is needed to realize that end than she had before, a reason that takes the formof a rational imperative. This claim does not by itself establish that humanity is the sourceof all objective or intrinsic value. To reach her stronger conclusion, Korsgaard would haveto invoke a more ambitious understanding of how willing an end makes it good. Willingan end would have to engender a new reason to will that end in the first place. If so,then every minimally rational choice, even the most whimsical or arbitrary, would turnout to be self-justifying. But as Korsgaard emphasizes, a reason must be able in principleto guide and constrain our deliberation: it must be something that an agent could inprinciple violate. Korsgaard may not intend this stronger, more problematic reading. Shedoes caution that whatever reason we gain by our commitment, it is not “exactly . . . a

further reason.” This qualification may rule out precisely the conclusion that minimally rational choice is inherently self-justifying. But if this is the point of the qualification, thentalk of willing making its end good seems misleading. In willing an end we do subject ourselves to rationally binding constraints, but we do not confer value in the way suggestedby Korsgaard’s Creating the Kingdom of Ends and The Sources of Normativity . In arbitrarily

willing an end I make my choice no less arbitrary, even though I may be rationally obligedto do what will promote that end.








On this interpretation, we would recognize the active exercise of rationalagency to be binding on any rational agent whatsoever. This latter read-ing is clearly Kant’s intended conclusion, but nothing in the argument so far privileges one reading of humanity’s authority over the other. Sofar, the regress argument has only revealed only a very indeterminatecommitment to us, and both interpretations are equally adequate waysof further specifying that concern.29

To decide between these competing interpretations of the authority of humanity, we must augment the initial premises of the regress ar-gument. Considering the unconditional value of our rational nature,Kant claims that “every other rational being represents his existence inthis way consequent on just the same rational ground that also holdsfor me; thus it is at the same time an objective principle from which,

as a supreme practical ground, it must be possible to derive all laws of the will.”30 Kant realizes that this conclusion is not fully supported by the argument that has preceded it. He immediately adds: “Here I put forward this proposition as a postulate. The grounds for it will be foundin the last section.”31 These further grounds that become available inGroundwork III involve the claim that the will is free. Supposedly, suchfreedom is an essential aspect of our experience of deliberation and,hence, something we may also assume “from a practical point of view.”

29. In Kant’s Ethical Thought , Wood rules out the agent-relative interpretation, sayingthat for Kant “merely agent-relative reasons (simply as such) are never justifying reasons,hence not reasons at all in the sense that is relevant here. Agent-relative reasons might count as genuine justifying reasons, but only when they can be brought under a universal

principle of value that gives them an interpretation in agent-neutral terms” (p. 128). Woodhere seems to conflate agent-neutral reasons with ones that are expressible in purely general terms. If consideration C justifies my doing A, then there must indeed be somegeneral description of me and my situation such that anyone who falls under it would be

justified by C in doing A. Any justifying reason has to be formulable in a way that avoidsdirect reference to any particular person for whom it is such a reason. In contrast, anagent-relative reason is a justifying reason that, in its appropriately general formulation,nevertheless still contains a “free agent variable” in the expression of C that refers backto the agent to whom the reason is addressed. The rational egoist believes that eachperson’s ends give that person justifying reason to do what promotes them. Such reasonsare grounded in a perfectly general principle, even though the reasons so grounded turnout to be completely agent-relative. Of course, this reading must admit that even if I amfully justified in doing something, someone else may be fully justified in trying to stopme. The agent-relative reading has to admit the possibility of rationallyirresolvableconflict.However, it seems that we cannot appeal to this fact to disqualify the agent-relative reading

without tacitly assuming that justifying reasons must be something like potential legislationof a harmonious Kingdom of Ends. This latter criterion is not a feature of justifying reasonsper se, but a substantive moral commitment. In rejecting the agent-relative interpretationon these grounds, we would be begging the question of the egoist (cf. Korsgaard, “Kant’sFormula of Humanity,” p. 122).

30. Kant, Groundwork , 4:429.31. Ibid., 4:429n.








Presupposing such freedom, we can now choose between the two com-peting interpretations of humanity’s authority as an end-in-itself.

On the agent-relative reading, where every individual recognizesonly the authority of his own humanity over himself, we would have togive up any interesting conception of the will’s freedom. On this ap-proach, once an individual has made some choice, determinate practicalnecessities do apply to him. However, his initial choice would still involvean irreducible element of arbitrariness. The agent confronts an array of minimally appropriate projects whose merits fail to determine any particular choice to be rationally necessary. Given the rational indeter-minacy of such a choice, the agent’s ultimate decision must be in part arbitrary. If his choice is made determinate simply as a result of thecausal influence of desire, then he will not have chosen freely at all. Yet

if he has made up his mind in a way independent of both the influenceof desire and the (underdetermined) merits of the options, then hischoice manifests only the empty spontaneity that cannot really be calledchoice at all. We might understand the value of rational nature in anagent-relative way, but in so doing we sacrifice any interesting sense of our own free agency. Our freedom would begin only where our waysof making sense of action run out.

On the other hand, if we interpret the value of rational nature inthe agent-neutral way, we can sustain a meaningful sense of the will’sfreedom. The value of rational nature would then be independent of the actual choices of any particular individuals. As such, this value couldprovide the further normative guidance needed to make such choicesfully determinate. The normative “slack” left by the competing meritsof our options could be taken up by whatever further demands ourgeneral humanity makes on each of us as individuals. Such constraint

would still be consistent with the will’s fundamental freedom. While the value of humanity, read broadly, could make our choices determinate,this value would not be an end alien to the will itself. The first stage of the regress argument showed that any rational will must recognize somesuch authority, even if the argument did not fully specify the sense in

which the will must do so. In recognizing the general value of humanity, we would not be submitting to some external demand. Instead, we wouldonly be accepting a particular interpretation of our own vague but in-eluctable commitments. Our freedom would begin not just where ourreasons run out, but at the point where we start to have a substantial

understanding of ourselves as free beings. V

In avoiding Regan’s worries, this version of the regress argument exposesitself to new doubts. For the argument to work, it must first be the casethat we do necessarily deliberate and act “under the idea of freedom”








in the requisite sense. Even in the Groundwork , Kant worries that theneeded kind of practical freedom is not actually presupposed by prac-tical deliberation simpliciter . When confronting the “circle,” Kant sug-gests that the requisite freedom is to be found only in deliberation that is already informed by substantive moral commitments.32 This is a realproblem, and it may have forced Kant to significantly revise his under-standing of the grounds of the moral law in the second Critique .

It is also not obvious that the conclusion of this regress argument has any determinate content. Recognition of humanity as an end-in-itself will be an empty commitment unless there is a way of understand-ing the authority of rational nature that is distinct from the more limitedauthority that particular agents possess over themselves. Kant representsthe value of humanity in terms of a hypothetical corporate rational agent

choosing the basic legislation that will govern the actions of its constit-uent members. This ideal of a Kingdom of Ends is meant to allow usto conceive of the rational choice of a subject who is equally every rational agent in general and yet no rational agent in particular. Suchan ideal is hardly self-explanatory, but it is what we would need to makesense of respecting rational nature simply as such. Insofar as this idealturns out to have content, recognition of humanity as an end-in-itself could plausibly be rendered as a commitment to abide by whateverlegislation is necessary for such a well-ordered Kingdom of Ends.

Proponents of the regress argument sometimes suggest that thereis a reason to promote whatever anyone rationally chooses because suchchoice directly confers value upon its objects. Like Regan, I find this

view implausible, but I do not think the Kantian is committed to it. TheKantian can well admit that choosing something worthless does not make it any less worthless or the choice any less misguided or foolish.The argument shows that there is always a presumptive reason to helpothers in the pursuit of their rationally chosen ends, but not becauseintrinsic value has been bestowed upon those ends. Rather, we havesuch reasons only to the extent that some principle of beneficence,indifferent to the actual worth of the projects in question, turns out tobe part of the constitution of any Kingdom of Ends. I would then havesome reason to help the grass counter, but not out of respect for the

value that grass counting has taken on through her choice of it. Rather,I would have a reason to help the grass counter out of respect for her

as a rational chooser, even when there is nothing in her particular

choices to recommend them. Her importance as an agent goes beyondher role as a detector or producer of the good. Her choices have a valuethat is irreducible to the value of what she has chosen. Of course, it ishard to see how we could have any reason to help someone were it the

32. Ibid., 4:449–50.








case that all of her choices turned out to be utterly worthless. But thenit would be equally difficult to see such a bizarre character as a rationalagent in the first place.

A full defense of Kant would have to say much more about how the legislation of a Kingdom of Ends adequately reflects the authority of rational choice as such, and how this legislation manages to havedeterminate content. Such a defense would also have to confront the

worries about “the idea of freedom” that Kant struggled with throughout his works. Both issues are beyond the scope of this reply. Regan’s ob-

jections concern only the coherence and plausibility of taking rationalnature itself as the grounds of all evaluative truths. My approach toKant’s account of the value of rational nature sidesteps Regan’s worries,because it accepts that various things may be, simply in virtue of their

intrinsic properties, especially appropriate or inappropriate objects of concern and choice. The Kantian need not be committed to any par-ticular view of the source of intrinsic value, at least in the broad sensein which Regan understands it. To show humanity to be the sole end-in-itself, the Kantian need only show that rational nature alone is fit tomake practical demands on us. This position allows that there may stillbe a great many positions from which credible suggestions might nev-ertheless be entertained.

VI

Could Kant’s practical philosophy make a place for intrinsic values that are not wholly derivative of the value of rational nature? Despite thepoverty of his explicit account of nonmoral value, Kant does seem tohave the resources to accommodate this possibility. The issue turns on

just how Kant understands those “incentives of the will” through which we entertain nonmoral interests. Regan avoids this topic, remarking only that “this is not the place for a full discussion of the role of incentivesin a Kantian theory of action, but the claim that we can act only onneed or inclination threatens the very possibility of a nonsensuously affected rational nature, whereas Kant wants such natures to be possible,for both good and evil.”33 This dismissal is puzzling. Kant never deniesthat our wills are sensuously affected: he only insists that our wills arenot sensuously determined . Sensuously determined wills, like those of animals, would indeed be incapable of rational self-determination and,

with that, any possibility of good or evil. Yet something can be sensuously

affected without being thereby determined. My beliefs are certainly sen-suously affected through my perceptions, but it is hardly obvious that my beliefs are causally determined by these perceptions. Kant introducesincentives in part to show how our sensible nature could inform our

33. Regan, p. 279, n. 37.








rational choice enough to make determinate choice possible, without undermining the freedom we must possess as morally responsibleagents. If such incentives are mere inclinations, it will be hard to explain

why they have even the “first word” in the will’s deliberations, beingnothing more than facts about our motivational psychology. On a morepromising reading, incentives could be something more like perceptualmodes of presentation by which we might recognize something’s in-trinsic value. By admitting such distinct values, Kant could show why such incentives should have any deliberative significance in the first place. Contemporary Kantians can thus accommodate and benefit froma modest realism about value, so long as they take care not to trespassupon the legislative prerogatives of our own rational nature.34

34. How should the Kantian understand the basis of such intrinsic goods that arenevertheless not rationally obligatory? In The Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard appeals tothe more particular but still normatively freighted conceptions of one’s “practical identity,”a move that does have precedent in what Kant calls our ineliminable “predispositions togood” (Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason , trans. Allen Wood and George diGiovanni [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], vol. 6, pp. 26–28). The sug-gestion here is that we understand value simply in terms of those normatively constituted

self-conceptions that show our lives to be worthwhile. Such self-conceptions, and the valuesthey reveal, will be more or less normative just to the degree that they make our livesbetter able to survive general reflection while sustaining particular forms of devotion. Of course, these criteria are themselves irreducibly normative, and we should not hope togive any nontendentious or uncontroversial construal of them. While such an understand-ing of value locates it firmly within human attitudes and practices, it offers little encour-agement to those who hope for naturalistic analyses and reductions.

Sussman Authority of Humanity

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