stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

in the determination of choice through the mere form of giving universal law that a maxim must
be capable of” (5:33). Kant often talks about morality in terms of Gesinnung (MM 6:393, R 6:25,
6:26, 6:47, 6:51 and 6:72). Matthew Caswell recognizes this point in “Kant’s Conception of the
Highest Good, the Gesinnung, and the Theory of Radical Evil.” “The conception of the
Gesinnung appears sporadically throughout (almost) all of Kant’s practical philosophy, and is
always used to refer to the basic moral orientation or attitude of a finite agent” (Caswell 190).
For this reason perhaps the best way to understand reason as autonomy is in terms of an attitude.
Kant captures the moral law in few different formulas. Perhaps the universal law formula is the
most important one. “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my
maxim should become a universal law” (Gr 402). But what does this formula of what ought to
happen mean? “A maxim is the subjective principle of volition: an objective principle…is the
practical law” (Gr 402n). A maxim is what the individual subject wants. The law is what the
individual as a human being wants. Thus what ought to happen is that what the individual subject
wants become what he wants as a human being. As Lewis. W. Beck recognizes: “there is thus a
trichotomy, not a dichotomy, to wit: (a) mere maxim, (b) law, (c) law which is also a maxim”
(Beck 82). But what does the individual want as a human being? As long as we understand what
the individual human being wants in terms of some object, the moral law will sound either too
pessimistic or too optimistic for its own good. What the individual subject wants as a human
being will be either peace and love or war and hate depending on what we think the real object of
human desire is. But the point is that none of these options allows for willing as such. In each
case we are after the feeling of pleasure. But the feeling of pleasure is not true of the human will
as such. Instead, what unites all human beings is not so much the object of their will whatever it
may be, but rather willing as such. “The moral law, however, is thought as objectively necessary
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