Abstract

Bernard Williams has recently taken Kant to task for his apparent inability to account for the moral import of emotions. Rigid adherence to Kant's austere "motive of duty," says Williams, undermines any possibility of integrity of character, since it demands that an agent's moral life be alienated from her emotional life. ;Providing an adequate response to Williams' critiques on these issues will require a revision of our understanding of Kant's conceptions of action and of freedom. The "Incorporation Thesis", introduced by Andrews Reath and expanded by Henry Allison, asserts that no incentive, including those sensibly-expressed incentives we call "inclinations," can determine choice except by being incorporated into a maxim of action. To support and complete this theory of action, Allison goes on to introduce an incompatibilist conception of freedom. Although Allison's account saves Kant from a crude "vector forces" account of action, it also seems to grant Williams' point that, for Kant, it is only rational principles and not emotions that are crucial for moral action. ;I begin my dissertation by providing an alternative interpretation of Kantian motivation and choice which, while saving the advantages of the Incorporation Thesis, grants also that all action is motivated by one's strongest desire. In Chapter Two, I discuss and reject received opinions about Kant which would suggest that this account of motivation necessarily undermines his project of a metaphysics of morals. In Chapter Three, I provide my positive account of specifically moral motivation, clarifying the meaning of the practicality of pure reason, given that it is the strength of one's moral desires that motivates moral action. In Chapter Four, I provide a compatibilist account of freedom and autonomy. Finally, in a Postscript, I argue that these accounts of action and freedom allow for a wide range of feelings to be granted legitimate motivating influence in moral action. Furthermore, properly conceived, integrity of character need not be compromised