Kant’s Conception of Conscience
Umut Eldem*[1]
Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Russian
Federation
Istanbul Esenyurt University, Turkey
Abstract
In
this paper I provide a detailed account of Kant’s conception of conscience in
order to answer a significant question that has recently arisen in the
secondary literature: How should we understand Kant’s insistence on the
infallibility of conscience? Some commentators have tried to make sense of the
claim by suggesting that conscience is a special kind of moral judgment, while
others have argued that it is a kind of feeling. My contention is that neither
option is helpful in comprehending why and how Kant develops his ideas about
conscience in this specific and peculiar way. I argue that the appropriate way
to understand this conception is to establish its broader significance for
Kant’s moral philosophy, together with his understanding of human moral agency.
Keywords
Immanuel
Kant, moral judgment, conscience, moral anthropology, practical philosophy
There has been a recent interest in Kant’s conception
of conscience, especially with regards to his claim that “an erring conscience
is an absurdity” (MS 6:401). Some Kant scholars attempted to make sense of this
claim by arguing that conscience is a special kind of moral judgment
(Knappik& Mayr 2013, Kazim 2017 and Vujosevic 2014). Others have suggested
that conscience is a kind of feeling (Wood 2008). I shall argue that both
options are unsatisfactory and that the correct way of understanding and
assessing Kant’s conception of conscience is by examining how it arises from
what he calls a “moral anthropology”. Kant’s account of conscience needs to be
pursued as a constitutive feature of our form of moral agency, which can be
reduced neither to a kind of feeling nor to an intellectual power.
Let
me begin by underlining the significance of this concept for Kant. We find
discussions of the concept of conscience in many of Kant’s texts especially
from the 1790s. In contrast, there are only a few mentions of this concept in
his earlier texts. I believe that the reason for this is conscience is part of
a moral anthropology and it is not associated with the justification of moral
principles (which Kant elaborates in the Groundwork and the second Critique).
Andrea Esser argues that, in Kant’s moral philosophy,
“conscience is assigned neither a causal role nor a leading role in terms of
content, nor a generally or systematically important role, but only a marginal
one” (Esser 2008, p. 281). From her point of view, Kant developed a more
restricted account of conscience so that it does not compete with the dictates
of practical reason. This is certainly correct; since conscience belongs
properly to moral anthropology. This anthropology is required for the
application and use of moral principles and not their content or justification
(G 4:388).
Contrary
to Esser, however, I shall insist that the concept of conscience does play a
systematically important role in Kant’s moral philosophy. Conscience is
explicated many times in Kant’s lectures on ethics, and it is discussed
extensively in two major works from the 1790’s (Religion Within the
Boundaries of Reason Alone and the Metaphysics of Morals), as well
as in the essay on Theodicy. What is characteristic of these later works is
their concern, not with the grounding of morality per se, but with the
necessary features of our agency through which pure moral principles can be
learned and acted upon. Since the book on Religion and the Theodicy essay deal mostly
with the religious aspect of conscience, I shall focus on the lecture notes and
the Metaphysics of Morals, leaving the former investigation for another paper.
Taken
collectively, these later texts can be construed as parts of a moral
anthropology, which is of utmost importance if we are to make use of the moral
principles presented in Kant’s earlier works such as the Critique of Practical
Judgment or the Groundwork. That Kant was aware of the systematic importance of
a moral anthropology is evident from the fact that almost all his major
writings from the 1790s are somehow related to it or can be used to expand upon
it.[2] We also
see that conscience is discussed in detail in these texts.
Let
us first look at the lecture notes on ethics in order to see the basic aspects
of Kant’s conception of conscience.
1. Conscience in the Vigilantius Lecture Notes (1793-94)
Before getting into the discussion on conscience, a
short comment on the reliability of the lecture notes itself might help us
along the way. The lecture notes taken by Kant’s students and colleagues are
usually not taken to be authoritative by themselves. The main reason for this
is that Kant did not have his own manuscript for these lectures, and the notes
seem to have been written after class. Hence it is likely that there have been
some omissions or distortions with regard to what Kant actually taught in
class.[3] That
being said, what we read from the lecture notes on the concept of conscience is
exactly in line with what we can find in Kant’s published works. For this
reason, I believe the lecture notes can be used to ascertain some interesting
features of Kant’s conception of conscience by providing some key concepts and
distinctions.
Kant’s
first attempt to elucidate the concept of conscience can be found in the
lecture notes taken by Georg Ludwig Collins in 1784. In these notes we find
that Kant had already begun thinking about conscience as an internal court (CL
27:355)-a metaphor that can be found also in the Metaphysics of Morals
of 1797. However, his mature view of conscience is not to be found in these
earlier notes, since he then thought that there could be errors involved in
conscience. In his expositions of conscience during the 1790s, Kant
consistently defends the highly unorthodox view that conscience is infallible.
For this reason, I begin my discussion with the Vigilantius lecture notes.
These
lecture notes taken by Johann Friedrich Vigilantius begin nine years after the
Collins notes, on October 1793, and consist of Kant’s presentation of the
metaphysics of morals. However, taken as a whole, there are significant
differences between the lecture notes and the eventual work that Kant published
in 1797.[4] One
reason for this is that Kant taught a separate course on the doctrine of right,
and hence the Vigilantius notes do not have an extended discussion of issues
related to justice. With regards to Kant’s conception of conscience, however,
we do not come across many significant changes, although there are differences
in emphasis and the method of explication.
In these lecture notes we also find the famous court
metaphor of conscience, however, since it is discussed more in detail in the Metaphysics
of Morals, I shall take up that metaphor in the next section. The main role
of conscience that can be gathered from these notes is that it is concerned
with the examination of “inner actions” of a moral agent, since they cannot be
“known to an external judge” (VL 27:572). These inner actions include our
disposition toward the requirements of morality. The phenomenon of conscience
involves a reflexive judgment on the “morality” of our actions, rather than
their “legality”. This is a key feature of Kant’s conception of conscience and
it explains in part why Kant discusses this concept within the purview of the Doctrine
of Virtue (instead of the Doctrine of Right) in 1797.
The
lecture notes indicate that Kant thought this internal court can also be
regarded as an external one, if a person believes in God and “accepts [him] as
a judge” (VL 27:574). This is a peculiar way of putting the issue, but I shall
clarify it when I return to the court metaphor in the next section, where the
presentation of this metaphor is more comprehensive. There is an important
point to be noted in this part of the notes as it is relevant for Kant’s
account of conscience in general: the internal forum of conscience cannot
settle issues about human justice, since this is in the purview of the faculty
of understanding and its determining aspect (VL 27:574). One central feature of
Kant’s account of conscience is that it is closely related, yet distinct from,
the power of judgment. I shall explicate the significance of this point in the
last section of this article where I discuss Kant’s insistence on the
infallibility of conscience.
In the same part of the lecture notes we also find a
crucial insight that is of utmost importance for Kant: even if a person does
not believe in God, s/he can still have a conscience “in case s/he possesses
moral principles as such” (VL 27:574). This view of conscience can be called a
“cosmopolitan view”, since it disregards differences in religious convictions
and instead places conscience primarily into the domain of morals. The relation
between conscience and religion remains relevant, but it is now endowed with a
particularly moral import.[5]
Here Kant seems to talk about conscience as “the
ability to impute one’s own deed to oneself” and conscientiousness as the
“readiness to do this [imputation]” (VL 27:575). Conscience, in this regard, is
understood as presupposing an objective obligation and is relegated to the role
of strengthening the disposition to fulfill that obligation. In this part of
the lecture notes, the violation of conscience is connected to the “loss of
one’s entire moral worth” (VL 27:575).
Given
a moral dilemma, any choice that goes against our conscience would result in a
kind of “self-denial” or a threat to personal integrity. This idea is closely
related to the infallibility of conscience. One cannot be mistaken that the call
of conscience is sincerely one’s response as a moral agent thus constituted. It
is a moral response, in the sense that it is a response that one may regard as
morally appropriate and necessary. However, the response of conscience is not a
response that we give voluntarily, and it is not sufficient for initiating
action. This requires forming a maxim to act and hence, volition.
How
the imputation of a deed is connected to conscience can be understood from some
remarks in later parts of the lecture notes. One important point related to
this issue is that conscience is like apperception, involving the
“consciousness of my will, my disposition to do right . . . consciousness of
what duty is” (VL 27:614).[6] What is
characteristic of conscience, then, is that it contains an awareness of the
content of my volitions (and hence maxims). In order to impute an action to
myself I need to be able to regard myself as responsible for the action that I
have done. This is a significant part of the lecture notes from which we can
understand the relation between conscience and reflexive judgment, since it is
only by using reflexive judgments that I can conceive of myself as having acted
intentionally.
Intentional
action is the kind of action for which I am morally responsible. We also see
the same point made in the Metaphysics of Morals. There, Kant implies
that conscience is the condition of all duties as such (MS 6:407), since
without it no one “would neither impute anything to himself as conforming with
duty nor reproach himself with anything as contrary to duty” (MS 6:401).
Imputation results from our own awareness that the action that springs from us
is intentional, and hence we are morally responsible for its consequences.
The close connection that Kant draws between conscience
and judgment should not lead us to the view that they are identical.[7] In the
next page of the lecture notes, Kant seems to criticize Baumgarten for equating
conscience with judgment as “subsumption of our doings under the law” (VL
27:616). Throughout his moral writings, Kant is usually very careful in
distinguishing clearly between that which falls under the purview of the
understanding (which concerns the determination of what our duty is in a given
situation) and our subjective awareness of whether we have in fact done what is
our duty or not, including whether we have done it for the right reasons or
not.
A
related issue is the kind of temporality involved in the different roles that
conscience can play with regards to action. In this connection, Kant talks
about a distinction between an examining and a judging conscience (VL 27:615).
The former relates to present and future action while the latter relates to our
past actions. Examining conscience is related to a deed: we reflexively examine
ourselves to appraise whether we have considered all the relevant information
that pertains the situation at hand. In that respect it is necessary “to ensure
that no object is present in the factum, and known to us, that has not
been examined and taken into account” (VL 27:614). During this part of the
lectures, Kant lists three dicta about examining conscience: self-examination,
reaching subjective certainty that the examination is thorough, and being
sincere in our judgment of ourselves and the situation at hand. This role of
conscience is also clearly tied to the notion of reflexive judgment (VL
27:618). In its examining aspect, conscience relates to a situation in which we
are about to act, that is, to present or future situations of moral action and
this aspect of conscience has to be cultivated so that we can orient ourselves
better in moral situations (VL 27:617). The reason for this is that conscience
“reinforces our awareness” that we are in a “situation governed by laws of
duty” (VL 27:619).
What
follows from this is that conscience, in its examining aspect, is inherently
reflexive, but we must keep in mind that its influence on our will is not
automatic. This consciousness by itself does not ensure that we shall act on
that verdict. In other words, conscience is the cursor by which reason
influences our deliberation in a moral situation, but it never determines it
completely, as it is up to us whether to incorporate the verdict of conscience
into our maxim.
Judging conscience, by contrast, pertains to our past
actions and this is where feelings of remorse or a “nagging conscience” come
into play. According to the lecture notes, this nagging conscience can only be
soothed by amending the wrong we have committed, rather than wallowing in
self-anguish (VL 27:618). This is crucial even at the hour of death. We are
obligated to do what we can to ameliorate any situation in which we may have
done wrong. As we can read from
Vigilantius’ notes: “even in death we must be meticulous in preventing evil
consequences of our actions from arising after our demise, and so must not
disdain even the seeking for forgiveness” (VL 27:619).
At
this point we can read Kant’s contention that conscience is infallible is
easier to grasp via a distinction between an error of judgment and an
“awareness of the wrongness of reasons” (VL 27:614). What is unconscientious is
to “regard something as a right while knowingly holding it to be wrong”. This
means that we can be mistaken about the rightness or wrongness of the action,
but we cannot be mistaken about whether we believe that the action in question
is right or wrong. Here, the role of conscience is relegated to our subjective
disposition toward the deed in question, which includes consciousness of the
fact that the appropriate kind of self-examination has taken place. We cannot
be in error with regards to whether we have examined ourselves or not and it is
primarily in this sense that Kant thinks conscience is infallible.
In
this section I have presented some of the central aspects of Kant’s conception
of conscience that we can gather from the Vigilantius lecture notes. Conscience
is involved in the imputation of a deed to ourselves; it is distinct but
closely related to the power of judgment, it is infallible and it ought to be cultivated,
especially in its examining aspect. I now turn to Kant’s discussion of
conscience in the Metaphysics of Morals.
2. Conscience in the Metaphysics of Morals
(1797)
Kant’s conception of conscience is formulated and
discussed most extensively in the Doctrine of Virtue, which is the
second part of the Metaphysics of Morals. In the introduction of the Doctrine
of Virtue, conscience is counted among the four “concepts of what is
presupposed on the part of feeling by the mind’s receptivity to concepts of duty
as such” (MS 6:399). It is crucial to grasp what this formulation means to see
what place Kant accords to conscience within our moral lives. The other three
preconditions are moral feeling, love of one’s neighbor and respect for oneself
(self-esteem).
What
is significant about these preconditions is that our consciousness of them
“only follow from consciousness of a moral law, as the effect this has on the
mind” (MS 6:399). We do not have a duty to acquire these preconditions, as they
are constitutive of our form of moral agency. We do have a duty to cultivate
and strengthen these preconditions so that they aid us in acting in accordance
with duty.[8]
In his paper entitled “Moral Feelings in the
Metaphysics of Morals” Paul Guyer translates the phrase “concepts of what is
presupposed on the part of feeling” as “aesthetic preconditions” (Guyer 2010,
p. 130fn). According to Guyer, there is a hierarchical relation between these
four preconditions in terms of generality. Moral feeling is the most general as
it is “what makes us susceptible to the general idea of acting in accordance
with duty” (ibid., p. 141). The other three preconditions relate to
increasingly specific aspects of our moral practice. Conscience is concerned
with particular maxims (ibid., p. 144), love of one’s neighbor and self-esteem
“impel us to strengthen our natural disposition to sympathy” and can play a
role “as proximate causes of particular actions” (ibid., p.150).
According
to Guyer’s account, the cultivation of the most general precondition (moral
feeling), leads to the cultivation of the other three preconditions in order of
specificity. It is unfortunate that Guyer uses causal locutions to explain the
relation between these preconditions and action.[9] When the
initiation of action based on a maxim is considered, a causal account cannot
provide the proper normative grounds of guidance, since they can only present
us with what is the case.
The main concern for the aesthetic preconditions,
therefore, cannot be their causal efficacy (or lack thereof), but rather their
appropriate cultivation and strengthening with respect to our moral agency in
general, that is, the proper attunement of these preconditions in accordance
with the requirements of morality. In this endeavor we are to employ the
reflexive aspect of judgment (as it relates to features of intentionality),
rather than the determining aspect (generally related to causal or substantial
theoretical judgments). The reason for this is that morally significant actions
can only be recognized to be such on the assumption of freedom of action, which
requires not a determining judgment about causal processes but a reflexive
judgment about intentionality: that is, unless freedom is central to our
self-understanding, we cannot make sense of morality at all.[10]
Kant asserts that there cannot be a duty to acquire
these aesthetic preconditions, rather, all human beings possess them, simply in
virtue of being semi-rational agents (MS 6:399). These preconditions can be
regarded as constitutive of moral agency (as they have their source in our
consciousness of the moral law) but it is not enough to possess them, one needs
to be attentive towards them and cultivate them. This is what Henry Allison
calls the incorporation thesis; no matter which feelings or preconditions are
present in an agent, only through their incorporation into maxims can they play
a role in moral action (Allison 1990, p.54). What needs to be cultivated, then,
are not only these preconditions, but also our responsiveness to them as free
agents. The attunement of these preconditions can only be accomplished through
moral education.
What
is significant is that the effect of the moral law on our minds does not only
have intellectual import, but also an emotional aspect. All four predispositions
involve both the thought of duty and some kind of feeling. One reason for this
is that the human will is “pathologically affected” but not determined
(A534/B562). Another reason is that all our volitions (or indeed, all our
experiences) involve some sort of inclination (G 4:398). Moral feelings can be
said to increase our awareness of the morally salient features in our everyday
experience. This is the way in which Kant construes the aesthetic
predispositions, and hence conscience.
I claim that the voice of conscience yields a specific
affective tone through which it emulates a certain kind of moral experience.
This is the way in which conscience can be understood as distinct from other
mental phenomena. In order for us to attribute this experience to conscience,
we need to be able to discern what distinguishes conscience from other moral
feelings. Kant associates the feeling of awe (respect coupled with fear) with
the functioning of conscience (MS 6:438) and I claim that this is the key
property which distinguishes conscience from other mental phenomena.
Conscience
provides an affective link between the moral law and our minds-I recognize this
law as authoritative, and therefore I recognize myself as obligated to act in
accordance with it. This imputation has both an intellectual and an affective
character. If conscience were purely intellectual, a further question would
arise as to that which gives rise to the painful feelings of guilt and remorse.
These feelings must be understood as part of the operation of conscience, or we
would need a further capacity to translate the verdict of reason into such
feelings apart from conscience. The talk of “pangs” of conscience also relates
to this point (see VL 27:43). Otherwise, we face the danger of conscience being
swallowed up by our intellectual capacity-reason.
What
makes conscience distinctive, then, is that it incorporates both feeling and
intellect. However, the same is true of what Kant described as the feeling of
respect in the 1780s, and what he calls the four aesthetic preconditions in the
Metaphysics of Morals. After the passage in which Kant discusses the
court metaphor of conscience (a topic to be discussed shortly), we get a clue
as to what distinguishes conscience from the other aesthetic preconditions:
“Every human being has a conscience and finds himself observed, threatened,
and, in general, kept in awe (respect coupled with fear) by an internal judge”
(MS 6:438).
Kant
usually correlates the general feeling of respect with our consciousness of the
moral law. Conscience, then, adds an element of fear, which can be attributed
to a fear of punishment. This fear of punishment can only arise in a situation
where there is danger of deviating from the requirements of morality and hence
it can be felt prior to the deed, perhaps via a representation of the deed in
question. What we fear in this situation is to be found guilty of a violation
of duty (MS 6:440). In this context, what distinguishes conscience from the
moral feeling is that it is more specific, and it incorporates an element of
fear.
Kant’s
remarks on the feeling of awe (Ehrfurcht) will be helpful to understand
the kind of feeling that is associated with conscience. In his essay on the
relation between theory and practice (dated 1793), Kant relates the feeling of
awe with our recognition of the greatness and sublimity of our true vocation.
This awe accompanies an inner experience in which “the mind is elevated and
animated toward a pure moral disposition” (TP 8:287). Here Kant also suggests
that, in private and public instruction, we must draw attention to the fact
that we are able to do as duty requires with appropriate respect toward the
moral law.
In the Metaphysics of Morals, the feeling of
awe is associated with the respect that is owed to the “principle of God’s
right” which is “justice” (MS 6:489). Here, justice must not be construed as
something that we owe to God, since, ultimately, we can only comprehend the
moral relations of human beings to human beings (MS 6:491). Nevertheless, the
pursuit of justice in this world has an affective aspect to it, which includes
feelings of awe and reverence.
The feeling of awe, however, is not necessarily
connected to a religious doctrine or denomination. This point is made clear by
Kant in his book on Religion. As he puts it “ [...] awe is not a
particular act of religion, but the religious disposition which universally
accompanies all our actions done in conformity to duty” (R 6:154fn). In this
work, Kant also describes the feeling of awe as being instilled by the majesty
of law. This feeling rouses “the respect toward a master . . . that lies in us”
and hence it is ultimately a feeling directed at the “sublimity of our own
vocation” (R 6:23fn).
The
feeling of awe can also be shown to be associated with what Kant calls
reflexive judgments on the sublime in the third Critique. While Kant
does not spell out a direct connection between conscience and the sublime, I
believe his remarks allow for an interpretation which ties them together. That
being said, one crucial difference has to be noted: reflexive judgments on the
sublime constitute an aesthetic judgment, which Kant categorizes as
disinterested and hence not directly related to the faculty of desire: it is
instead related to the enlargement of the faculty of imagination and its
harmony with the faculty of reason (KU 5:250, 5:256). Conscience, on the other
hand, is always involved with the practical aspect of reason and hence is
“interested” (VL 27:620).
Nevertheless,
the affective aspect of these operations of the mind seem to carry some
similarity, as they both give rise to the feeling of awe and they are both
related to the effects of the moral law upon our minds. The judgment of the
sublime “awakens the feeling of a super-sensible faculty in us” (KU 5:250). The
super-sensible here must be understood as an authority that rules over our
sensible nature, since Kant associates the feeling of sublime as related with
the “dominion that reason exercises over sensibility only in order to enlarge
it in a way suitable for its own proper domain (the practical) [. . .]” (KU
5:265). Recognizing the authority of the moral law that arises from reason,
then, gives rise to the feeling of awe. From an interested, that is, practical
perspective this feeling is associated with conscience. From a disinterested,
aesthetic point of view, this feeling is associated with reflexive judgments on
the sublime.
In
the Vigilantius lecture notes, we saw the suggestion that Kant also relates the
feeling of awe (which he also calls supreme respect) with piety (pietas),
which is “the disposition to perform virtuous actions in a god fearing frame of
mind, representing the highest stage and a pendant to duty, since human duties
are here construed as commands of God” (VL 27:715). The feeling of awe is
ultimately connected with what we take to be sacred. Kant’s conception of
conscience is intimately related with holiness but construed not from the
perspective of a revealed religion, but rather from the perspective of a more cosmopolitan,
moral religion.
An
issue related with holiness can be found in the Metaphysics of Morals as
well. Conscience, according to Kant, appears peculiar because its dictates seem
to be those of another person, although one and the same person is both judge
and s/he who is judged in the internal court of conscience (MS 6: 438). This
passage implies a duality of persons residing in one and the same subject.
Kant
grounds this distinction in his Transcendental Idealism, claiming that the
“judging” aspect is done by the “homo noumenon” while that one who is being
judged is the “homo phenomenon” (MS 6:335, 6:418). However, he does not require
transcendental idealism to provide a basis for this distinction, he only needs
a conception of moral agency that can act from duty (autonomous), but that is
also prone to deviating from the moral law (heteronomy). This involves
incorporating an awareness of our moral worth and comparing it with a moral
ideal within the phenomenon of conscience. Ideals arise from our reflexive
judgments pertaining to a systematic unity of our concepts, ends or principles.
Kant already draws attention to this ideal in connection with conscience in the
Metaphysics of Morals (MS 6:438). In order to see how this moral ideal
functions, let us take a closer look at the court metaphor that Kant puts
forward in the Doctrine of Virtue:
Every concept of duty involves objective constraint
through a law (a moral imperative limiting our freedom) and belongs to
practical understanding, which provides a rule. But the internal imputation of
a deed, as a case falling under a law (in meritum aut demeritum), belongs to
the power of judgment (iudicium), which, as the subjective principle of
imputing an action, judges with rightful force whether the action as a deed (an
action coming under a law) has occurred or not. Upon it follows the conclusion
of reason (the verdict), that is, the connecting of the rightful result with
the action (condemnation or acquittal). All of this takes place before a
tribunal (coram iudicio), which, as a moral person giving effect to the law, is
called a court (forum). Consciousness of an internal court in man ("before
which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another") is conscience. (MS
6:438)
This passage reinforces Kant’s distinction between the
process of judging and our consciousness of it. During moral deliberation,
there are various thoughts at play, representing different points of view on
the matter at hand. At the end of this inner discussion, reason reaches a
verdict and this verdict is made known to us through a verdict, which either
carries with it an affective probing or “nagging” or relieves us from our
anxiety of being found guilty in our own regard. That conscience is intimately
connected with sensibility is apparent. As Kant puts it: “although the pain one
feels from the pangs of conscience has a moral source it is still a natural
effect, like grief, fear, or any other state of suffering” (MS 6:394).
Now,
in our eventual action we may choose to listen to our conscience, or we may
choose to do something else: this would result in following one of the thoughts
that “made its case” in the court of reason. In case this happens, we are not
acting sincerely; that is, we are not acting according to our best judgment. As
we have seen in the Vigilantius lecture notes, this is “regarding an action as
right while knowing that it is wrong” and hence it is blatant insincerity (VL
27:614).
In his discussion of court metaphor, Kant appeals to
God, or a subjective representation of God as the inner peer mentioned earlier
(MS 6:439). This inner peer is the representative of what we take to be a moral
ideal. We ought to compare our actions and maxims with what we think would be
the actions and maxims of a morally perfect being, imagined as acting always
from duty (aus Pflicht) and never from inclination (aus Neigung).
Kant insists that we must not compare ourselves with other people in terms of
moral perfection, but we must rather compare ourselves with the requirements of
morality and to what extent we have been successful in meeting them (see KpV
5:37, 5:69, 5:74; MS 6:435, 6:437).
In his explication of Kant’s account of conscience,
Owen Ware suggests that what the agent takes to be the moral ideal in
conscience is “who s/he ought to be” (Ware 2009, p.691). This sounds plausible,
but I believe Kant is searching for a stronger ideal. What judges us in
conscience is not only our best version, but also a “scrutinizer of hearts” (MS
6:439). Kant is pessimistic with regards to self-knowledge (MS 6:382, 6:447).
This means that we need to imagine an agent who has better access to our inner
dispositions than we do. This could only be conceived as an ideal spectator, or
God.
Even though we cannot know our deepest dispositions
with certainty, we can strive to make them accessible and try to model our
behavior on what an ideal agent would do in each situation. We cannot know our
own maxims, since we are prone to self-deception (R 6:68, T 8:268fn), but we
can know what an appropriate and moral maxim would be, since we are aware of
the requirements of morality. This moral ideal can be used as one precisely
because it cannot be compared with anything else, since it is of supreme
significance and hence is incomparable and inviolable (G 4:435). In this sense,
the moral law is the sole principle we can use for a precise measurement of
legitimate action and moral disposition.
In
conscience, we imagine this being also as judging us, as it knows all our
dispositions (MS 6:439). Here, conscience can be understood as affective
feedback through which we assess our own judgments-we imagine a morally
superior person (a judge) who has full access to our motives and maxims, and we
submit our purported (or past) decisions to its scrutiny. This judge is a
figure which we ought to respect and fear. This is why Kant characterizes
conscience as “being accountable to God for all of one’s deeds” (MS 6:439).
In
this section we have examined the key features of Kant’s account of conscience.
It is one of four “aesthetic predispositions”, it is distinct from our other
cognitive and conative processes by its’ ability to combine intellect and
affection, it gives rise to the feeling of awe and it involves an experience of
being judged by an ideal spectator. We have also introduced the crucial
distinction between judging and being conscious of that judgment. In the next
section I shall discuss one of the most central issues in the interpretation of
Kant’s account of conscience, namely his insistence that “an erring conscience
is an absurdity” (MS 6:401).
3. Infallibility of Conscience
Kant makes two significant claims about conscience
which warrant our attention, as these claims have given rise to several
discussions in secondary literature. Conscience “speaks involuntarily” and it
“cannot err” (MS 6:401). As we have already established, conscience is
something that can be cultivated. While an involuntary and un-erring response
can hardly be said to be related to anything intellectual or spontaneous, the
ability to cultivate seems to imply a middle ground between receptivity and
spontaneity. I shall attempt to show that it is in this middle ground where the
infallibility of conscience lies.
In
Kant’s view, spontaneity is the common property of reason, understanding and
judgment and these faculties are clearly distinguished from sensibility, which
is generally construed as receptive (B68, A51/B75, B93, A97). In this respect,
our judgments are fallible, but feeling is infallible (A293/B350). As a
corollary, the spontaneous aspect of cognition is always open to mistakes.
Hence, one reason for the infallibility of conscience could be that we do not
have spontaneous control over it.
Some
commentators have suggested that, since Kant construes conscience as
infallible, it cannot play a central role in his moral philosophy. Andrea Esser
stresses that “[i]nsofar as this characterization of conscience introduces an
element of subjective immediacy into Kant’s critical ethics, the conception of
conscience remains problematic.” (Esser 2008, p. 277). Given Kant’s synthetic
view of cognition and his insistence on the fallibility of judgment, it must be
admitted that the prospect for an immediacy involved in conscience does not
seem to fit well with Kant’s understanding of the spontaneity that has to be
involved in moral thought and action. I believe this problem can be remedied if
one can show in what sense conscience is infallible, thereby properly placing
this special kind of immediacy within Kant’s framework.
Infallibility
is perhaps the most extensively discussed problem about Kant’s conception of
conscience. Asserting that conscience is infallible contradicts many views on
conscience that came before (and after) Kant. What is more, we also come across
the view, in the Metaphysics of Morals, that a person who acts according
to his/her conscience, cannot be guilty. As Kant writes:
But if someone is aware that he has acted in
accordance with his conscience, then as far as guilt or innocence is concerned
nothing more can be required of him. It is incumbent upon him only to enlighten
his understanding in the matter of what is or is not duty; but when it comes,
or has come, to a deed, conscience speaks involuntarily and unavoidably. (MS
6:401)
Conscience is the “consciousness” of the inner court
and hence cannot be equated with judgement itself (MS 6:438). The function of
conscience is to raise in us the awareness of a) the imputation of a deed to
ourselves (which presupposes) b) relaying to us the verdict of reason in a
specific situation. Since we have cognized the requirements of morality,
presented as verdicts of reason in conscience, we are morally responsible for
complying with them in our intentional actions. Taken in this sense, it seems
plausible that conscience, as a faculty of awareness akin to perception, cannot
be in error. In other words, conscience is related to an awareness of our moral
beliefs and standards that bear upon the specific situation at hand.
This
does not mean we are not responsible for our “honest mistakes”, it merely means
that acting conscientiously is acting according to our best judgment. Our best
judgment may still be mistaken, due to a variety of contingencies, but we can
hardly be mistaken that it was indeed our best judgment. Our best judgments, in
turn, must incorporate reflexive judgments as to the adequacy and extent of our
moral self-examination. In the Theodicy essay we find the distinction between
the judgment of understanding presented in contrast with the “voice” of
conscience. Kant states that we could be mistaken with respect to the former
but not the latter. As he puts it:
For in the first instance (the truth or falsity of a
statement) we compare what we say with the object in a logical judgment
(through the understanding), whereas in the second instance, where we declare
what we hold as true, we compare what we say with the subject (before
conscience). (T 8:267)
What comes to mind is something similar to the basic
features of perception: I can be mistaken in whether or not the object I see
before me is actually there (due to some optical illusion or a malfunction of
the senses), but I can hardly be mistaken in whether it seems that the object
is there.
I cannot be mistaken in what I hear as the voice of
conscience itself. Whatever may be the pronunciation of the inner court, I
cannot be mistaken that it is in fact the verdict of that court. As stated in
the previous section, I believe it is in this sense that Kant claims an “erring
conscience is an absurdity” (MS 6:401). This can only be explained if the voice
of conscience is “distinctive” and “unique”, its call must be distinguishable
from any other thoughts that we may happen to entertain. As I have shown, this
uniqueness can be attributed to the feeling of awe defined as “respect coupled
with fear”, specifically functioning alongside the operations of conscience. We
especially become aware of this affective aspect in the acquittal or
condemnation of conscience.
If I
listen to my conscience, I cannot be held guilty of dishonesty, in other words,
acting according to conscience is acting with the best intention I have and the
best judgment I have reached. I think this is what Kant has in mind when he
says that no more can be required of a person who has listened to her
conscience. This does not imply that the verdicts we have reached through
rational self-deliberation cannot be mistaken at all. In fact, Kant always
warns us about the possibility of self-deceit, as well as the opaqueness
regarding ourselves (TP 8:284 and MS 6:446-7).
Our best judgments will be the ones which take all the
relevant factors of a given situation into consideration. It will involve
thinking without relying on an external authority, but also thinking from the
standpoint of others and doing so consistently. Finally, our conscience will relay
to us the final verdict of reason and we will have acted to the best of our
abilities if we take heed of its declarations. This process never guarantees
success but only sincerity, which Kant thinks is the best we can hope for.
Throughout his writings on conscience, Kant insists
that we are immediately aware of what we hold to be true.[11] We owe this immediate
awareness to conscience, since conscience “reports” to us that the judicial
process of reason has reached a verdict through a sufficiently comprehensive
examination. Through the operation of conscience, reason reaches a verdict
about itself; what is at stake here is not primarily the truth or falsity, but
rather the sincerity of our judgment. In other words, our conscience resonates
with what we sincerely hold to be true. In case we say anything different than
what our conscience repeats back to us, we are in effect lying, since we must
be saying something which we do not hold to be true. As we have seen in the
Vigilantius lecture notes, this amounts to unconscientiousness. This results in
a disharmony between how we think and how we act (or speak). Kant presents the same point in the Theodicy essay:
One cannot always stand by the truth of what one says
to oneself or to another (for one can be mistaken); however, one can and must
stand by the truthfulness of one's declaration or confession, because one has
immediate consciousness of this. (T 8:267)
This is one of the instances in which our conscience
may reproach us. We can read an interesting discussion about the nature of the
reproach of conscience here. Kant contends that “every crime already carries
with it its due punishment, inasmuch as the conscience of the perpetrator
torments...even more harshly than the Furies” (T 8:261). We have seen this aspect
of conscience also in the Vigilantius lecture notes where Kant spoke of a
“nagging conscience”. This idea is reminiscent of Socrates’ argument in the Crito
about how “wrongdoing and injustice is in every way harmful and shameful to the
wrongdoer” (Crito, 49b). When we do something morally wrong, we are in
effect harming ourselves as well-if our conscience is functioning properly.
This
point, however, cannot be pursued too far, since the person committing the
crime might be so depraved as to have completely shut off the voice of his/her
conscience. Kant thinks that conscience is so pervasive that we can never
silence it. As he puts it: “it follows him like his shadow when he plans to
escape[...] He can at most, in extreme depravity, bring himself to heed it no
longer, but he still cannot help hearing it.” (MS 6:438)
Kant
also warns us against imputing the disposition of a virtuous person upon
someone who has become excessively evil. This shows that conscience is not some
a priori capacity which functions somewhat adequately in all human beings;
rather, the effectiveness of conscience is contingent upon the moral character
of the person in question, and upon whether she incorporates the dictates of
her conscience into her maxims. This requires that one cultivates one’s
conscience in order to “sharpen one's attentiveness to the voice of the inner
judge and to use every means to obtain a hearing for it” (MS 6:401).
Kant’s warnings about listening to the dictates of
conscience emphasizes the necessity of this precondition for anyone to become a
moral being who can act resolutely and effectively. As we have seen, conscience
has the function of imputing a deed to ourselves and hence holding ourselves
morally responsible for our actions. However, as the aforementioned passage
makes it clear, acting in accordance with the voice of conscience is a further
issue. Again, after we hear the voice of conscience, it is up to us to
incorporate our best judgement into our maxims, which then leads to intentional
action.
In
order to elaborate this point further, and to tie the discussion of maxims with
the discussion of infallibility, we may think of a distinction between the
voice of conscience and its content. Since the content carried with the voice
of conscience consists in the outcome of the proceedings of the inner court, it
necessarily involves a judgement of the understanding and hence is fallible.
However, the voice of conscience, since it is a direct cognitive and emotive
response of our particular moral constitution, speaks directly and infallibly.
Our
moral character involves our core convictions about morality, or what we take
to be true in the moral realm. In his paper on Kant and conscience, Claudio La
Rocca explains the kind of conviction that is at stake in conscience by
referring to a passage in the first Critique (La Rocca 2016, p. 73). In
this passage, Kant is making a distinction between two senses of holding
something to be true; if it is valid for everyone, the belief is called
conviction, but if it “has its ground only in the particular constitution of
the subject, then it is called persuasion” (A820/B848).
It is
my contention that the voice of conscience is a voice of persuasion that
“sounds like” a conviction and this is the sense in which we cannot be
mistaken. This point might be confusing, since according to Kant, we cannot
subjectively distinguish between conviction and persuasion. Furthermore, this
idea can come into conflict with Kant’s insistence that conscience cannot err,
since we are capable of a kind of self-deception in which we can “feign
conviction” even in our “inner professions” (T 8:268fn).
A persuasion that sounds like a conviction seems
puzzling. However, we could draw an analogy to the effect that this kind of
persuasion is akin to a judgment of taste; it has a universal import, even
though its ground is in the specific constitution of the subject. The
distinguishing mark of a judgment of beauty is that it relays a specific kind
of pleasure that arises from the harmonious free play of our imagination and
understanding (KU 5:218). The analogy here would be a judgment that is relayed
to us by conscience involving another kind of feeling: the feeling of awe.
Without some distinguishing feature, Kant would have difficulties in asserting
that conscience is infallible, since we cannot differentiate between conviction
and persuasion subjectively.
What
we can know with certainty is what we regard to be right and wrong. Since
conscience concerns sincerity, the cultivation of conscience must in part
consist in the cultivation of sincerity. Sincerity requires that we are always
disposed to asserting what we hold to be true. Now, I shall consider and
criticize some secondary literature that pertains specifically to the
infallibility of conscience. In this way, I shall demonstrate the merits of my
own interpretation of Kant’s conception of conscience.
4. Secondary Literature on the Infallibility of
Conscience
Let me now consider some arguments found in the
secondary literature in order to ascertain whether my interpretation of the
infallibility of conscience is plausible. Contrary to many commentators, I
believe this infallibility is rooted in conscience being intertwined with
sensibility. In the secondary literature, the main strategy has been to
interpret this infallibility as being due to a special kind of judgment, a
reflexive judgment in which the agent makes sure that she has been diligent in
her judging.
As I
have shown, while it is true that conscience is intimately related with reflexive
judgment, they must be kept separate. Kant argues that the diligence involved
in making any kind of judgment has to be present in any and all kinds of
“rational” judgment. Therefore, defining conscience as a special kind of moral
judgment (as Knappik& Mayr, Kazim and Vujosevic suggest) cannot account for
the infallibility of conscience.
We have seen that the infallibility of conscience has
to be accounted for not in purely intellectual terms but with terms that also
appeal to sensibility. The faculty of judgment is always fallible and, as we
have seen, Kant is careful in distinguishing conscience from it. We hear the
voice of conscience unavoidably and involuntarily (MS 6:401). Furthermore, we
have an affective experience with regard to conscience–its pangs, its threats
of punishment, the feeling of awe etc., but we need not have any affective
aspect in our usual cognitive functioning. Let us now see how this
interpretation of Kant’s conception of conscience fares in the face of some
interpretations of the concept in the secondary literature.
Dean
Moyar argues that Kant’s conception of conscience creates a tension for his
moral theory in general. This tension concerns the primacy of conscience in
Kant’s account. In the first instance, conscience is a prerequisite for being a
morally responsible agent in the first place. On the other hand, since
conscience presupposes moral judgment (among other features of practical
reason), it cannot function without it (Moyar 2008, p. 341).
As we
have seen, Kant claims that conscience is an integral part of our constitution,
it is a natural part of human agency, it enables us to hear the decisions of
the inner court (which is practical reason). However, Kant does not say that
conscience is the only thing constitutive of our moral agency, nor does he say
that it has priority over everything else that pertains to moral agency.
Moral judgment itself presupposes some knowledge of
morally relevant features in specific situations what Barbara Herman calls
rules of moral salience (Herman 1993, p. 77). What this means is that making
any moral judgment, and, in turn, having a well-functioning conscience depends
on our previous moral education, our awareness of a world with moral features.
Moral judgments, imperatives, duties and conscience; all of them come into view
after we have received some sort of moral upbringing. We do not start engaging
in morality from scratch.
Another
reply to this point can be given with the distinction I made earlier about the ratio
cognoscendi and ratio essendi. One of the ways in which we
experience the effects of the moral law upon our minds is conscience, since it
is one of the four aesthetic preconditions of the mind’s receptivity to moral
law. This means that conscience has no role in assessing the legitimacy of the
moral law (or that which morality requires), but rather it “prepares” the
person to be responsive to the demands of morality. This preparation also
involves prior education and maturation, not only of our intellectual
capacities but also of our sensible nature. When we put the picture in this way
there is no circularity about the systematic role that conscience plays–it is
essential for becoming a fully-functioning moral agent.
Broadly
speaking, there are two main lines of interpretation in the secondary
literature on Kant’s conception of conscience. Some commentators take
conscience to be “intellectual” and as “having an effect on feeling”. In her
paper on Kant’s account of conscience, Marijana Vujosevic argues that
conscience is a specific manifestation of practical reason. As such, it is a
“kind of moral self-assessment that involves cognizing and judging our own
character” (Vujosevic 2014, p. 450). Ultimately, she claims that conscience is
only intellectual as it cannot be mere feeling.
There
is some textual evidence for this point; in the Religion Kant says that
“should anyone fear that his reason, through conscience, will judge him too
leniently, he errs, I believe, seriously” (R 6:70fn). Also, in the Metaphysics
of Morals, conscience is characterized as “an original intellectual and
moral predisposition” (MS 6:438). It is obvious that conscience cannot merely
consist of feelings. If that were the case, we would not intelligibly talk
about cultivating conscience, just as we cannot make sense of cultivating pain.
As I have demonstrated, Kant consistently
distinguishes between the operations of reason, understanding and judgment from
the functioning of conscience. Arguing that conscience is purely intellectual
is also inconsistent with Kant’s repeated claim that it is infallible. Even in
the passage above from the Religion, it seems that the judging is done
by reason alone, and conscience is a kind of “tool” of reason to exact a kind
of “torment or reproach” to the person. In order for conscience to fulfill this
function, I believe that it should incorporate elements of both an intellectual
and an affective nature. Indeed, this is the mark of all aesthetic
predispositions discussed in the Metaphysics of Morals, since they
consist of a receptivity to concepts of morality.
Vujosevic
points to a passage in the Lectures on Ethics in which Kant says that
conscience ‘conveys an inner pain at evil actions, and an inner joy at good
ones’ (CL 27: 297). Conscience, according to her, operates by “linking a
particular feeling with the action” (Vujosevic 2014, p. 457). There are two
problems with this view. The first problem is that this quotation is taken from
the Collins lecture notes, in which Kant had not yet developed his mature view
of conscience (as I have shown in the first section). The second problem is to
explain how conscience could “link a feeling with the action”, if it had no
relation to the affective side of our constitution. The second camp in the
interpretation of Kant’s account of conscience can answer this problem, since
they generally argue that conscience is a kind of feeling. According to Allen
Wood, “conscience is a feeling of pleasure or displeasure associated with
myself, in view of some action I am either contemplating or that I have already
performed” (Wood 2008, p. 183). This line of thought, I believe, is also
mistaken, as it would be difficult to reconcile the mere feelings of pleasure
and displeasure with requirements of sincerity and imputation.
Knappik and Mayr’s discussion of conscience also seems
to put them alongside Vujosevic’s interpretation, as they rely heavily on an
account of proper moral judgment, which they argue requires diligence and
certainty. These are traits that conscience is supposed to inspect. They claim
that certainty should be regarded in a “non-factive” way, not requiring truth.
This much is certainly correct, since conscience involves subjective certainty.
They also provide a detailed and plausible account of moral judgment, but they
fail to show how judgment is connected to conscience. This is quite striking,
as they begin their paper by showing how Kant himself distinguishes between
conscience and judgment. To disregard this claim and assert that conscience
“issues an infallible second-order judgment whose object is the first order
moral judgment of understanding” is to miss the point about infallibility
(Knappik&Mayr 2013, p. 15).
In his book on Kant’s account of conscience Emre Kazim
also defends the view the conscience is primarily intellectual. Kazim (2017)
cites the definition of thinking from the first Critique (A69/B94) and
claims that conscience is also a type of thinking. The definition reads:
“Thinking is cognition through concepts”. He then distinguishes between two
aspects of conscience: intellectual conscience, defined as “the judgment of the
internal court”, and its effect on moral feeling as the “consciousness of this
judgment which motivates the agent”. This interpretation also faces the
difficulty of explaining how, on Kant’s understanding of our cognitive
faculties, there could be involuntary or “unerring thinking”.
5.
Conclusion
As I have shown, the correct way to account for the
infallibility of conscience is not to endow it with a special kind of judgment.
Any and all judgments issue from the same faculty of judgment. Conscience is
infallible not because it engages in a second order judgment; it is infallible
because we cannot use it spontaneously as we do the faculty of judgment.
Conscience is best understood as the affective way in which we register the
normative force of moral considerations by comparing our inner dispositions
with that of an ideal moral agent. The feelings associated specifically with
conscience, such as awe, reverence and fear of doing wrong, can be cultivated
or ignored altogether but we cannot give rise to them by sheer force of will.
For
these reasons, any account which identifies conscience with judgment cannot
make sense of Kant’s assertions that conscience speaks “involuntarily” and
“unavoidably” (MS 6:401). An involuntary and unavoidable judgment would be a
chimera, at odds with Kant’s claims about spontaneity and freedom regarding the
faculties of the mind. An account which takes conscience to be merely a kind of
feeling, on the other hand, would have problems in explaining its relation to
imputation and sincerity.
In this article I have focused on two texts in order
to ascertain Kant’s general conception of conscience as it relates to our moral
and cognitive capacities. I began with a discussion of the lecture notes taken
by Vigilantius, where some of the key aspects of Kant’s conception of
conscience could be found: we have seen that conscience is a) concerned with
imputation and our inner dispositions, b) that it is infallible and c) that it
is distinct from yet related to judgment.
In
the next section I examined Kant’s conception of conscience in the Metaphysics
of Morals. I began this discussion with what Kant calls aesthetic
predispositions. Crucially, these are moral feelings which incorporate both the
thought of duty and some form of feeling. I argued that what distinguished
conscience from the other predispositions was its unique connection with
reflexive judgment and its ability to give rise to a feeling of awe. I have
also discussed what Kant means by the infallibility of conscience against the
background of some discussions in the secondary literature and have shown how
my interpretation has significant advantages over other attempts of exegesis.
References
All references to Kant’s works are from The Cambridge
Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant which follow the Akademie pagination.
List of Abbreviations
A/B: The Critique of Pure Reason (1998)
CL: Collins Lecture Notes on Ethics (1997)
G: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1996)
KpV: The Critique of Practical Reason (1996)
KU: The Critique of the Power of Judgment (1998)
MS: The Metaphysics of Morals (1996)
O: What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?
(1996)b
R:. Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone
(1996)b
T: On The miscarriage of all philosophical trials in
theodicy (1996)b
TP: On the Common Saying ‘This May Be True in Theory
But It Does Not Apply In Practice (1996)b
VL: Vigilantius Lecture Notes on Ethics (1997)
Secondary Literature:
Allison, H. (1990). Kant’s theory of freedom,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Denis, L. & Sensen, O., (2015). Introduction. In L
Denis & O. Sensen (Eds.), Kant’s lectures on ethics: A critical guide
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp 1-12
Esser, A. (2013). The inner court of conscience, moral
self-knowledge, and the proper object of duty (TL 437-444). In O. Sensen, J.
Timmermann & A. Trampota
(Eds.), Kant’s Tugendlehre: A comprehensive
commentary, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 269-291
Guyer, P. (2010). Moral feelings in the Metaphysics of
Morals. In L. Denis (Ed.), Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A critical guide,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 130-151
Herman, B. (1993). The practice of moral judgment, The
practice of moral judgment,
London: Harvard University Press, pp 73-93.
Kazim, E. (2017). Kant on conscience: A unified
approach to moral self-consciousness, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Knappik, F. & Mayr, E. (2019). “An Erring
Conscience is an Absurdity”: The Later Kant on Certainty, Moral Judgment and
the Infallibility of Conscience. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie
101 (1):92-134.
La Rocca, C. (2016). Kant and the problem of
conscience, Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy, 1, pp 65-79.
Moyar, D. (2008). Unstable autonomy: Conscience and
judgment in Kant’s moral
philosophy, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 5 (3),
pp 327-360.
Paton, H.J. (1960). Conscience and Kant, Kant
Studien, 70 (3), pp 239-251
Plato (1997). Crito, The complete works of Plato,
J. Cooper (Ed.), Indianapolis, Hackett
Publishing.
Vujosevic, M. (2014). The judge in the mirror: Kant on
conscience, Kantian Review, 19
(3), pp 449-474.
Ware, O. (2009). The Duty of Self-Knowledge, Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 79 (3): pp 671-698.
Wood, A. (2008). Conscience, Kantian ethics,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp 182-192.
