Abstract
This chapter starts by examining Kant’s definition of a maxim or subjective principle of volition, distinguishing such principles from imperatives, and clarifying the senses in which they are subjective, general, and propositions. Along the way, I offer an introductory explanation of Kant’s claim that an incentive is unable to determine the will, except in so far as it has been incorporated into a maxim. Those tasks completed, I set out to determine, from examples to be found in Kant’s writings on moral philosophy, the logical form of an important class of subjective principles which Kant calls ‘maxims of action’. I identify that form as ‘For any obtaining situation s, if s is an F-type situation, then I will Φ,’ where ‘F’ is a predicate capable of characterising types of situation, and Φ-ing is a type of action. I label my account of the form of a maxim of action ‘M’. I end the chapter by considering examples of maxims of action that Kant gives elsewhere in his writings, concluding that they too exemplify M.
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Notes
- 1.
Kant (1996a), 4:412.
- 2.
As explained below, imperatives only appear as such (as ‘oughts’) to imperfectly rational beings (e.g., to humans). It is the agency of such beings with which Kant is primarily concerned, and on which I intend to focus: this last fact should be taken to underlie my rather liberal, and for that reason somewhat imprecise, use of the word ‘imperative’ when referring to objective principles.
- 3.
Kant (1996a), 4:421n.
- 4.
Kant (1996c), 6:225.
- 5.
Kant (1996b), 5:19.
- 6.
Kant (1996a), 4:401n.
- 7.
See, for example, Kant (1996c), 6:225; Kant (1996a), 4:413; Kant (1996b), 5:19. I deliberately avoid the claim here that imperatives inform agents how they ought to act. This is because, as will emerge in Chap. 4 and, more fully, in Part II of the book, there is a sense in which imperatives do not do this at all (though they do tell us what internal acts—chiefly of maxim adoption—we ought to carry out). Admittedly, as in the quotations in this section, Kant often portrays imperatives as recommending or commanding actions. But this seems to me, for reasons that will become clear as we proceed, to be a rather imprecise way of speaking: external actions are at best recommended or commanded only obliquely by imperatives, in so far as to counsel adoption of a maxim is indirectly to counsel action on that maxim.
- 8.
This, in fact, is not quite accurate. The view is only that all objective principles can be subjective, not also that all subjective principles can be objective.
- 9.
Paton (1971), p. 60.
- 10.
Kant (1996a), 4:401n.
- 11.
Kant (1996b), 5:20.
- 12.
They would only be akin to such laws, however: in particular, they would not be causal.
- 13.
See for instance Kant (1996c), 6:226: “Von dem Willen gehen die Gesetze aus; von der Willkür die Maximen.”
- 14.
Bratman (1987), p. 20.
- 15.
Kant (1996a), 4:421n.
- 16.
Kant (1996d), 6:24.
- 17.
Allison (1990), p. 40.
- 18.
- 19.
Given that, as I shall argue in Sect. 3.1, an agent has an end only in so far as she has at least one maxim that (in a sense to be made clear) ‘contains’ that end, the following passage from the Metaphysics of Morals is also relevant here: “… I can have no end without making it an end for myself. To have an end that I have not myself made an end is self-contradictory, an act of freedom which is yet not free.” Kant (1996c) 6:381.
- 20.
See Allison (1990), p. 40. Against the general commentarial trend, Richard McCarty has argued that this thesis is in fact not a genuine Kantian doctrine at all. See McCarty (2008) and McCarty (2009), pp. 71–81. I think that McCarty is wrong on this point, but I will need to wait until Sect. 6.2 briefly to state my misgivings in an endnote.
- 21.
Kant (1998), A534/B562.
- 22.
- 23.
Kerstein , partially following Rüdiger Bittner , also identifies three senses in which a maxim can be regarded as ‘subjective’. Kerstein’s senses are (1) a maxim is always a rule of some subject—there can be no maxim that is not ‘had’ by some agent; (2) maxims are chosen by agents; and (3) a maxim is a rule that applies only to the agent who has it—unlike an objective principle, it is not valid for the wills of all rational beings. Kerstein’s first and third sense are, it seems to me, both covered by my claim that a maxim is subjective in so far as it is not objective (if maxims are principles to which agents as a matter of fact subscribe, then there can be no ‘free-floating’ maxims that are not had by some agent, and since they are not objective, they cannot supply rules for the wills of all); and his second sense is clearly identical to my third. Kerstein fails to note, however, that a maxim is also subjective in so far as it is informed by a particular agent’s conative characteristics , unless this point can be taken to be implicit in his sense (3). See Kerstein (2002), p. 17.
- 24.
Kant (1996a), 4:440.
- 25.
Kant (1996b), 5:19.
- 26.
- 27.
Kerstein would, it appears, maintain that I could hold this policy and yet simply decide not to act upon it when the coronation takes place. I would question whether, in this case, the agent could be said still to retain the policy—at best, it seems to me that she would more accurately be said to have suspended it (see Sect. 4.4), if not to have abandoned it altogether. See Kerstein (2002), p. 17.
- 28.
Kant (1996a), 4:422.
- 29.
Kant (1996a), 4:423.
- 30.
The practice of mentioning maxims using a ‘the [a, my] maxim [or principle] of Φ-ing’ locution also extends to cases in which Kant draws attention to the conative characteristic that informs a maxim. So, we have occasions on which he refers to “this principle of self-love” in referring to a maxim of suicide (Kant (1996a), 4:422); to “a maxim of self-love ” (Kant (1996b), 5:34); to “the maxim of virtue” (Kant (1996b), 5:113); to “a universal maxim of prudence” (Kant (1996d), 6:33); and so on.
- 31.
Kant (1996a), 4:422.
- 32.
Kant (1996a), 4:422.
- 33.
Kant (1996b), 5:19.
- 34.
Kant (1996b), 5:27.
- 35.
Kant (1996a), 4:403.
- 36.
Although we will see shortly that in one place outside his ethical writings—in the Anthropology, to be exact—Kant does unequivocally present as maxims three principles of the form ‘To Φ’: the interpretative puzzle that this throws up will be dealt with in the next section.
- 37.
Kant (1996a), 4:403.
- 38.
To be so exacting about what is and is not the maxim here might seem to be a symptom of a near-pathological rage for precision. However, as will become clear later, I think it is of the first importance to determine whether the inclination from which an act is performed is or is not referred to in the maxim of that act.
- 39.
Harrison (1957), p. 53. I would, however, take issue with the claim that a motive can cause me to adopt a maxim, since, as we have already seen, a maxim must for Kant be freely adopted.
- 40.
Kant (1996a), 4:422.
- 41.
Wood (1999), p. xxii.
- 42.
Kant (1996a), 4:423.
- 43.
Kant (1996a), 4:423.
- 44.
It (or, more precisely, that part of it that follows “what is it to me?”) is also unequivocally regarded as a maxim by Charles Jones. See Jones (2001), p. 86.
- 45.
This sense is strengthened by the fact that the thinking is presented as episodic, as occurring on a particular occasion. That is, a maxim, though it could of course be thought of or articulated at a particular time, is presumably not best represented as primarily being a particular occurrent pattern of thought.
- 46.
In taking the variable s to range over obtaining situations here, I mean to avoid the possible objection that there may in some sense be situations (as possible arrangements of objects, or whatever) which yet do not obtain, much as for the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, there may be states of affairs that do not obtain: that is, that are not facts: see Wittgenstein (1974), 2–2.01. If this were the case, then there could exist a non-obtaining situation that satisfies the predicate F, the mere existence of which does not make it at all appropriate for me to Φ. Only if such a situation obtains will it be appropriate for me to Φ. It may of course be asked whether situations, obtaining or otherwise, are really items at all in any robust sense, and so a fortiori whether they are items over which it is possible to quantify. There is no denying that this is a legitimate question, but it is nonetheless one that I cannot address here.
- 47.
Strictly speaking, M2’ could be read in such a way as to make it possible to act upon it in a plurality of cases. That is, the maxim states only that its holder will shorten her life whenever it threatens more pain than it promises pleasure. And shortening my life is something that I can do on a number of occasions, perhaps by on the first occasion adopting a habit of smoking one hundred and twenty cigarettes per day, and on the second adopting a habit of drinking fifty pints of beer per day. Both actions could be described as ‘shortening my life’. However, (a) it seems clear that by ‘I will shorten my life,’ Kant means ‘I will take my life’; and (b) even if Kant has been consistently misread, and this is not his intention, it would still be possible to formulate a maxim of suicide which could in principle be acted upon no more than once.
- 48.
Many such maxims could be formulated. Examples include, ‘When my first child is born I will open a bank account for her’; ‘When I receive my last ever wage packet, I will book a round-the-world cruise’; and ‘When it is my 60th birthday, I will buy a pipe and slippers’.
- 49.
Bittner (2001), Section 80.
- 50.
Paton (1971), p. 137.
- 51.
Bittner (2001), Section 80.
- 52.
Feldman (1998), p. 188.
- 53.
Scholten (2016), p. 215.
- 54.
Allison (1990), pp. 89–90.
- 55.
I owe this objection, and the two examples with which it is illustrated, to an anonymous reviewer.
- 56.
McCarty (2009).
- 57.
McCarty (2009), p. 6.
- 58.
Kant (1997), 27:678.
- 59.
McCarty (2009), p. 5.
- 60.
McCarty (2009), p. 6.
- 61.
McCarty (2009), p. 7.
- 62.
Gressis (2010b), p. 232.
- 63.
McCarty (2009), p. 7.
- 64.
McCarty (2008), p. 430.
- 65.
McCarty (2008), p. 430.
- 66.
McCarty (2009), p. 5, n. 9.
- 67.
Mendelssohn (1997), p. 295.
- 68.
Kuehn (2001), p. 230.
- 69.
- 70.
- 71.
Kant (1996e), 8:374–375.
- 72.
- 73.
Kant (2007), 7:228.
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Herissone-Kelly, P. (2018). Maxims of Action. In: Kant on Maxims and Moral Motivation. Studies in German Idealism, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05572-1_2
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