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

Kant recognizes the insufficiency of every practical philosophy that begins with value no
matter what form that value takes. In the Critique of Practical Reason Kant talks about “the
errors of philosophers with respect to the supreme principle of morals” (CPrR 5:64). In what do
these errors consist? “For they sought an object of the will in order to make it fit into the matter
and the ground of a law…, whereas they should first have searched for a law that determined the
will a priori and immediately, and only then determined the object conformable to the will”
(CPrR 5:64). I explain Kant’s position in basic terms. A person performs many actions is his life.
The question is: in whose name are such actions performed? We can say that different people
have different values. In fact, we can even say that one person acts in the name of different
values. We can even say that one person acts in the name of different values in different
circumstances, and so on. Kant’s point however is this. If you act in the name of value that
means that you take that value as an object of your action. However, that you take that value as
an object of your action means that value exerts its influence over you. Kant puts this point in
stronger terms. Kant argues that really it is the value that is making you act. But how can a value
make you act? Kant develops this point in following terms. The value is making you act because
it promises the feeling of pleasure. This means that in the final analysis it is really the feeling of
pleasure that the value promises that acts. For this reason, Kant concludes, when practical
philosophy begins with the value it must end with heteronomy. “For, it will have been seen from
the Analytic that if one assumes any object under the name of a good as a determining ground of
the will prior to the moral law and then derives from it the supreme practical principle, this
would always produce heteronomy and supplant the moral principle” (CPrR 5:109). In fact, Kant
is radical in the sense that he makes no qualitative distinction among values. “Now, whether they
[philosophers] placed this object of pleasure, which was to yield the supreme concept of good, in
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