Introduction
One of the lines of argument employed by those who in the last few
decades have tried to show that the image of Kant as a cold philosopher
opposed to feelings is erroneous is to highlight that according to Kant
virtuous persons do not do their duty with disgust, but rather that they
experience a special moral contentment (moralische
Zufriedenheit), “a state of contentment and peace of soul in which
virtue is its own reward” (MS, AA 6: 377). As
already Paton pointed out, for Kant “it is a mark of genuine goodness if
we do our duty with a cheerful heart” (Paton 1967: 50). However, Kant
does not seem to have been very interested in this moral contentment
experienced by virtuous persons, so what we find are rather allusions,
often difficult to reconcile, than an elaborated account of moral
contentment. Kant, for example, in some places speaks simply of the
absence of what seem to be the pangs of the moral conscience (KpV, AA 5:
116), in other places of a negative contentment, not related to moral
conscience (KpV, AA 5: 118), and in yet other places of a positive
feeling of pleasure strictly speaking (KpV, AA 5: 38; MS, AA 6: 391). It
is also unclear who experiences this moral contentment: Kant at times
appears to suggest that only a virtuous person, after practicing virtue
for a certain time, can experience moral contentment; yet his own
explanation of moral contentment sometimes seems to imply that moral
contentment is necessarily related to all actions done out of respect
for the moral law. Clearly, moral contentment is a problematic concept
that calls for further clarification. And although in recent years there
have been some publications that not only mention its existence but deal
with it more extensively, they generally focus on some specific aspect
of Kant’s ethics related to moral contentment and thus leave unaddressed
some important questions about the nature of moral contentment. This article is intended to
complement (and at times counterbalance) these publications: I want to
explore the nature of this moral contentment and clarify who can
experience it, resolving the aforementioned tensions in the Kantian
corpus.
1.
What moral contentment is not: a feeling or the mere absence of pangs of
conscience
Kant devotes most space to moral contentment in the explanation of
the antinomy of practical reason in the second Critique, when
he asks how it is possible that both the Stoics and the Epicureans were
able to identify happiness and morality. The explanation for the
identification is that morality does indeed provide pleasure. However,
Kant immediately clarifies that it is a special type of pleasure – it is
“a negative satisfaction (Wohlgefallen) with one’s existence,
in which one is conscious of needing nothing” (KpV, AA 5: 117). Now,
what exactly does it mean that moral contentment is a “merely negative”
pleasure? We will see later how this reconciles with other places
mentioned in the introduction, where Kant seems to imply otherwise, but
in this place Kant clearly means to say that moral contentment is not a
feeling properly speaking. Kant distinguishes —if
we do not count the feeling of the beautiful, the merely contemplative,
disinterested feeling, whose true nature he did not yet know at the time
of writing the second Critique—
between two basic types of feeling: pathological feeling and moral
feeling. As he explains in the Metaphysics of Morals, “pleasure
that must precede one’s observance of the law in order for one to act in
conformity with the law is pathological (pathologisch) and
one’s conduct follows the order of nature; but pleasure that must be
preceded by the law in order to be felt is in the moral order” (MS, AA
6: 378; see also VT, AA 8: 395 FN). Now, moral contentment clearly
cannot be a pathological feeling, i.e. passive, sensibly dependent (from
pathos in Greek). As Kant explains, pathological feeling —a
“delight” (Vergnügen), as he calls it in the Critique of
Judgment (see KU, §5)— is produced by an object that agrees “with
the subjective conditions of life” (KpV, AA 5: 9 FN) and is therefore
capable of satisfying a need (Bedürfnis) of ours (see
KU, AA 5: 210.20f and GMS, AA 4: 413 FN). That is, we experience delight
when an object satisfies some need we have. It
should be therefore clear that moral contentment has to be of a
different kind; if it is really moral, it cannot be due to a
prior need that man seeks to satisfy. As Kant insists, we act morally
precisely when we “pay attention not to the interest in the object, but
merely to that in the action itself and in its principle in reason (the
law)” (GMS, AA 4: 413 FN), that is, we act morally when we act from
duty. And indeed, Kant explicitly says in the description of moral
contentment that “it does not depend upon the positive concurrence of a
[pathological] feeling” (KpV, AA 5: 118).
Regarding the other type of feeling, moral feeling, the situation is
more complex. Kant is not very clear on the question whether there is
only one kind of moral feeling (the feeling of respect) or whether there
are several – his above distinction between pathological feeling and
moral feeling could be compatible with both readings. I argue elsewhere
(Kolomý 2023) that there is only one properly moral feeling, the feeling
of respect; here I want to show why moral contentment cannot be
identified with it, as some interpreters claim (see, e.g., Beck 1960:
224, 229f or Himmelmann 2011: 112ff). It is true that there are some
reasons to identify moral contentment with the feeling of respect. To
begin with textual evidence, Kant —in the Analytic of the second
Critique, in the first passage of the whole book in which he
mentions the existence of moral contentment— actually seems to identify
it with the feeling of respect when he says that it “belongs to duty”
“to establish and to cultivate this feeling, which alone deserves to be
called moral feeling strictly speaking” (KpV, AA 5: 38).
Kant explicitly says that moral contentment is a feeling and furthermore
says that it is the only feeling that can be called moral: it should
therefore be the feeling of respect, the moral feeling par
excellence.
Additionally, the description of moral contentment in the explanation
of the antinomy of practical reason in a way resembles the description
of the feeling of respect in the third chapter of the Critique.
Kant explains that moral contentment has its origin in the enjoyment of
freedom, that comes from acting by one’s own reason and not from
inclinations. According to Kant, human beings have inclinations, that
is, pathological desires that correspond to a prior need, but
the problem is that these can never be completely satisfied: the
inclinations, Kant says, “change, grow with the indulgence one allows
them, and always leave behind a still greater void than one had thought
to fill” (KpV, AA 5: 118). In other words, it is impossible to satisfy
them completely: when one tries to satisfy one, another arises, or the
first grows even more. That is why —Kant explains— inclinations “are
always burdensome (lästig) to a rational being” (KpV, AA 5:
118.08ff). Therefore, when one acts through his higher faculty of
desire, from duty and not from inclinations, he experiences a special
kind of pleasure – Kant uses the word Zufriedenheit,
contentment (sometimes also Selbstzufriedenheit,
self-contentment). However, it is a merely negative pleasure because one
does not satisfy any previous need that had to be fulfilled; one is
simply glad to avoid the need-satisfaction mechanism of the lower
faculty of desire and to act prompted by one’s own reason – that is, to
act through the higher faculty of desire; as Kant says, one “is
conscious of needing nothing” (KpV, AA 5: 118)
and experiences it as an enjoyment of freedom: “freedom itself becomes
in this way (namely indirectly) capable of an enjoyment” (KpV, AA 5:
118).
Now, based on these affirmations, it is indeed not surprising that
some interpreters identify moral contentment with the feeling of
respect. It is precisely in the chapter on respect that Kant speaks
about self-approbation (Selbstbilligung) as attributable to a
person who “cognized himself as determined solely by the law and without
any interest, and now becomes conscious of an altogether different
interest subjectively produced by the law, which is purely practical and
free” (KpV, AA 5: 81; my emphasis). It indeed seems that this
positive aspect of the feeling of respect —Kant contrasts this
self-approbation with the displeasure (Unlust) contained within
the feeling of respect— is grounded precisely in the enjoyment of one’s
own freedom, which Kant later discusses more explicitly when addressing
moral contentment. Moreover, when Kant extols the moral incentive at the
end of the incentive-chapter, he explicitly mentions Epicurus, whom he
usually associates with moral contentment.
Kant literally says that “so many charms and attractions of life may
well be connected with this incentive that even for their sake alone the
most prudent choice of a reasonable Epicurean, reflecting on the
greatest well-being of life, would declare itself for moral conduct”
(KpV, AA 5: 88).
However, despite these parallels and passages that seem to identify
the two phenomena, I argue that moral contentment cannot be identified
with the feeling of respect. Mainly for the following reason: while the
feeling of respect is experienced by everyone —as Kant says, “[the law]
makes even the boldest evildoer tremble” (KpV, AA 5: 80.01)—, only he
who actually acts for the sake of the law also experiences the moral
contentment since he acts for the sake of the law of his own
reason and does not depend on his inclinations.
It seems to me that the underlying problem is that Kant was, in fact,
not particularly interested in moral contentment. After all, it is a
rather marginal topic and Kant deals with it mainly to explain the
errors of other philosophers. Such is the case with the first
reference to moral contentment in the Critique of Practical
Reason, in Remark II of Theorem IV of the Analytic, where Kant
argues against taking happiness as the determining ground
(Bestimmungsgrund) of the will and in this context also
mentions the theory of moral feeling (or moral sense) proposed by
Hutcheson and other British moral sense theorists. And the same is true
of Kant’s main explanation of moral contentment, which, as we have
already noted, is embedded in the resolution of the antinomy of
practical reason, where Kant wonders how it is possible that both the
Stoics and the Epicureans were able to identify happiness and morality.
What we find, then, in Kant’s discussions is a mixture of several
related phenomena, often confused with one another. I have already
argued elsewhere (Kolomý 2023: 108–10), in discussing moral feeling,
that Kant in Remark II of Theorem IV of the Analytic in fact confuses
moral contentment with the feeling of respect – this is the explanation
for the above passage, which calls moral contentment the only moral
feeling strictly speaking (KpV, AA 5: 38). Kant conflates moral
contentment with the feeling of respect here because he seems to be
convinced, on the one hand, that the positive, pleasurable aspect of the
moral feeling of the British moral sense theorists to whom he refers in
this passage actually corresponds to moral contentment,
and, on the other hand, that the British moral sense theorists (as well
as Epicurus) were, at heart, virtuous – although they theoretically
maintained that they acted for the sake of the pleasure that moral
actions promise, in practice they acted out of
respect, the only possible moral incentive.
On the other hand, although there one can no longer speak of
confusion, Kant also deals with several
related phenomena without carefully distinguishing them in the
incentive-chapter on the feeling of respect. Thus, when he extols the
moral incentive at the end of the chapter, he mentions Epicurus and
speaks of “so many charms and attractions of life [that] may well be
connected with this incentive [of respect]” (KpV, AA 5: 88). Logically,
these attractions of life are no longer properly part of respect itself;
they are merely consequences of acting out of respect. Therefore,
although it is true that both moral contentment and the feeling of
respect are related to the experience of freedom —we will see in the
next section what this means exactly in the case of moral contentment—,
it seems to me that there are also no textual reasons to identify moral
contentment with the feeling of respect; what there are, instead, are
systematic reasons to reject such an identification. The feeling of
respect is, indeed, a feeling that even the boldest evildoer
experiences; moral contentment, by contrast, is a merely “negative
satisfaction” (KpV, AA 5: 117) in the sense of the mere absence of
discontent, accessible only to those who actually act according to the
moral law.
And it seems to me that something analogous also occurs in the places
where Kant seems to suggest that moral contentment is simply knowing
that I have behaved as I should – as we say, we have done something
“with a clean conscience.” For instance, in the mentioned explanation of
the antinomy of practical reason in the second Critique, when
Kant asks how it is possible that Epicurus was able to identify
happiness and morality, he indeed confirms that “in fact an upright man
cannot be happy if he is not first conscious of his uprightness; for […]
the censure that his own cast of mind would force him to bring against
himself in case of a transgression, and his moral self-condemnation
would deprive him of all enjoyment of the agreeableness that his state
might otherwise contain” (KpV, AA 5: 116; see also KpV, AA 6: 38 in
relation not to Epicurus but to the British moral sense theorists). In
Theory and Practice, this time commenting on Garve’s
position, Kant also speaks of “moral
discontentment (Unzufriedenheit)” based on “reproach and purely
moral self- censure”, which “can make oneself unhappy” (TP, AA 8: 283
FN). These passages indeed appear to identify moral contentment with the
absolution granted by moral conscience.
And in fact, Kant’s description of moral conscience in the
Metaphysics of Morals seems to fit perfectly with the general
description of moral contentment: just as moral contentment is a merely
“a negative satisfaction” (KpV, AA 5: 117), so too “the blessedness
found in the comforting encouragement of one’s conscience is not
positive (joy) but merely negative (relief from preceding anxiety)” (MS,
AA 6: 440).
Here too, however, I would like to emphasize that Kant nowhere offers
a systematic treatment of moral contentment; in the passages where he
addresses it, he is simply responding to a broader question: he wants to
explain how it is possible that Epicurus (KpV, AA 5: 116), the British
moral sense theorists (KpV, AA 5: 38), and Garve (TP, AA 8: 283 FN) were
able to argue that we act morally in order to attain happiness. Accordingly, he mentions all the
possible advantages of acting morally – and these advantages include
both the peace of mind that comes when one acts in accordance with one’s
moral conscience (which, however, is not truly a reward but rather the
mere absence of reproach), as well as moral contentment properly
speaking, defined as “a negative satisfaction with one’s state” (KpV, AA
5: 118). These are different, though obviously related, phenomena: the
person who has acted for the sake of the moral law and thus in
accordance with his conscience may be “rejoicing at having escaped the
danger of being found punishable” (MS, AA 6: 440.29), but he may also
experience moral contentment properly speaking by being content to have
avoided the need-satisfaction mechanism of the lower faculty of desire
and to act prompted by one’s own reason, and thus thereby becoming
“conscious of needing nothing” (KpV, AA 5: 118). As Kant says —we will
see what this means in the next section— “freedom itself becomes in this
way (namely indirectly) capable of an enjoyment” (KpV, AA 5: 118).
Nevertheless, it is only this latter phenomenon to which Kant refers
when he asks whether we do not have “a word that does not denote
enjoyment, as the word happiness does, but that nevertheless indicates a
contentment with one’s existence, an analogue of happiness that must
necessarily accompany consciousness of virtue” (KpV, AA 5: 117). Only
this kind of contentment can be considered, so to speak, a gain that
comes with moral action. For, as Kant emphasizes regarding the
reproaches of moral conscience, the evildoer may in fact pay no heed to
conscience and still be happy (see MS, AA 6: 438 and MpVT, AA 8: 261).
2. The genuine nature
of moral contentment
After the above clarifications, we can now turn to the question of
who can experience moral contentment – a question that will
also help us further refine the nature of moral contentment itself.
Walschots argues that, for Kant, “self-contentment is not something that
can be experienced every time one’s motive is the moral law alone,” but
rather “can only be experienced by one who is at least half way to
acquiring a virtuous disposition” (2017: 294f). According to him, this
is significant because, in this way, Kant —unlike, for example,
Hutcheson— “entirely rules out the possibility of acting morally for the
sake of self-interest” (2017: 295). However, it seems to me that the
matter is more complex. While I fully agree with Walschots that Kant
“rules out the possibility of acting morally for the sake of
self-interest,” in my view, this holds for a different reason: moral
contentment can only be experienced when one acts from duty and,
therefore, does not seek it directly. If one were to seek it directly,
one would pervert the principle of moral action and, so to speak,
convert moral contentment into yet another inclination. In doing so, one
would also necessarily deprive oneself of the very contentment that
arises when acting independently of inclinations and thus without the
discontent associated with them. Therefore, Kant need not, on systematic
grounds, reserve moral contentment only for virtuous persons, as
Walschots suggests, since he can dismiss the possibility of acting
morally for the sake of self-interest from the outset.
I consider it important to point this out, as it seems problematic to
reserve moral contentment only for those who are already at least
halfway toward acquiring a virtuous disposition – that is, for the
repeated exercise of virtuous actions.
If moral contentment arises from the independence from inclinations, it
would seem that, in principle, it should be possible to experience it
every time one acts according to the moral law, even if it is for the
first time. However, it does seem that Kant, in the texts, appears to
reserve moral contentment only for the virtuous.
Let us then ask what systematic reasons Kant might have for doing so. A
closer reading of the description of moral contentment in the
Critique of Practical Reason in fact reveals that Kant does not
understand moral contentment merely as a negative experience in the
sense of the simple absence of discontent linked to the inclinations; Kant seems to refer instead to yet
another aspect: what gives rise to moral contentment is, rather, the
“consciousness of mastery over one’s inclinations” (KpV, AA 5:
118.25f; my emphasis; see also MS, AA 6: 485). According to Kant,
we can understand how […] [virtue] can in fact produce consciousness
of mastery over one’s inclinations, hence of independence from them and
so too from the discontent that always accompanies them, and thus can
produce a negative satisfaction with one’s state, that is, contentment,
which in its source is contentment with one’s person. (KpV, AA 5: 118)
The reference to virtue in this passage is clearly not accidental. As
Kant later explains in the Metaphysics of Morals, virtue
properly means “the moral strength of a man’s will in
fulfilling his duty” (MS, AA 6: 405) – it is essentially the
capacity to do one’s duty despite possible obstacles. And since it is
the inclinations that obstruct our ability to do our duty, virtue is
precisely the capacity to overcome inclinations: the virtuous person has
acquired the capacity to overcome inclinations and thus possesses the
“consciousness of mastery over one’s inclinations” (KpV, AA 5:
118.25f).
If this is the case, it is likewise unsurprising that Kant connects
moral contentment specifically with the enjoyment of freedom – for Kant,
as Engstrom has emphasized (2002: 305), one is free only in the
possession of virtue (MS, AA 6: 405.30f). As Kant explains, “the less a
man can be constrained by natural means and the more he can be
constrained morally (through the mere representation of duty), so much
the more free he is” (MS, AA 6: 382 FN).
The virtuous person, then, who is independent from inclinations, has
acquired “the inner freedom to release himself from the
impetuous importunity of inclinations so that none of them, not even the
dearest, has any influence on a resolution for which we are now to make
use of our reason” (KpV, AA 5: 161) and “is conscious of needing
nothing” (KpV, AA 5: 117) – is “sufficient to [him]self” (KpV, AA 5:
161).
We have to conclude, then, that in Kant’s view moral contentment is
not a simple absence of discontent linked to the inclinations available
to everyone that acts from duty; rather, it appears to be reserved only
for the virtuous – it is only in virtue that “freedom […] becomes […]
capable of an enjoyment,” though “indirectly” (KpV, AA 5: 118), because
one is conscious that he does not depend on inclinations and can act on
the law of his own reason. This also clarifies the name Kant chooses for
the phenomenon of purely moral satisfaction: contentment with oneself,
Selbstzufriedenheit – I am content with myself because I know
that I do not depend on inclinations.
Nevertheless, if we understand moral contentment in this way, an
objection arises: if moral contentment is based on “consciousness of
mastery over one’s inclinations” (KpV, AA 5: 118.25f) and therefore on
the awareness of one’s own capacity to act from duty, this at
first sight does not seem compatible with the passages in which Kant
argues that it is not possible to know the true motives of one’s actions
(see GMS, AA 4: 407; RGV, AA 6: 51; MS, AA 6: 392, 447).
If it is never possible to know whether we act from duty, how can one
experience moral contentment linked to our awareness of acting from duty
rather than from inclination? Here, however, it must be emphasized that,
as La Rocca (2013) has convincingly shown, Kant does not deny the
possibility of any knowledge of the motives of our actions, but
rather denies the possibility of attaining certainty about
them. Thus, when we genuinely intend to
act from duty, we can plausibly suppose that we are doing so; and
indeed, in our moral lives there will surely be many situations in which
it is evident that our inclinations point in one direction while duty
points in another, and if we do our duty, it is very likely that we are
in fact acting from duty and not from inclination (see, e.g., Kant’s
example at the end of the Doctrine of the Method of the Critique of
Practical Reason of the second Critique, KpV, AA 5: 161). The
problem is simply that we can never be sure that we act merely from duty
– even in situations where we sincerely believe we have acted from duty,
out of respect for the moral law, we can never be certain “that the real
determining cause of the will was not actually a covert impulse of
self-love (geheimer Antrieb der Selbstliebe)” (GMS, AA 4:
407).
3. Conclusion
As I have argued, Kant was not particularly interested in moral
contentment; for him, it is a rather marginal topic that appears when he
tries to explain the errors of other philosophers. Accordingly, his
treatment of moral contentment is fragmented, and we can find several
contradictory or imprecise formulations of it. Yet a coherent and
plausible account can be reconstructed. Moral contentment is not a
pathological feeling, nor can it be equated with the feeling of respect
or the peace of moral conscience. Rather, it is a uniquely moral kind of
“negative satisfaction”: an indirect enjoyment of inner freedom, made
possible through independence from inclination, and it appears as
directly connected to Kant’s specific conception of virtue defined
precisely as “the moral strength of a man’s will in fulfilling
his duty” (MS, AA 6: 405).
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Elizondo, E. Sonny (2016) “Morality is its own Reward”. Kantian Review, 21 (3), 343–65. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415416000236.
Engstrom, Stephen (2002) “The Inner Freedom of Virtue”. In Mark Timmons (ed.), Interpretative Essays (Oxford University Press), pp. 289–315. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198250098.003.0012.
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Kolomý, Vojtěch (Forthcoming) “Does Being a Good Person ‘Pay Off’? Kant’s Eudaimonistic Echoes in His Account of Moral Contentment”.
La Rocca, Claudio (2013) “Kant on Self-knowledge and Conscience”. In Dieter Hüning, Stefan Klingner, and Carsten Olk (eds.), Das Leben der Vernunft. Beiträge zur Philosophie Kants (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter), pp. 364–85. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110326994.364.
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