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The
Fragmented Will - Kant on Evil
Dr.
Pablo Muchnik In the face of the disturbing proximity of evil in the 20th century, I turn to Kant's conception of the will in order to understand the frailty of the moral point of view, i.e., the promptness with which humans are capable of disregarding the good which they also acknowledge. I develop the notion of a structurally heterogeneous will, divided by the incommensurable demands of sensibility and rationality, to characterize the human type of volition. Humans are agents for whom their will is a problem: they are confronted by an unavoidable choice between good and evil, which determines their use of freedom in general and the type of reasons they are susceptible to heed in the process of moral deliberation. This fundamental choice represents an attempt to overcome the fragmentation of their own will, i.e., to resolve the tension between the incompatible demands of sensibility and rationality (or, as kant usually puts it, happiness and morality). According to this view, good and evil do not reside in the content of an agent's will (i.e., what she actually desires), but in its form. "Good" is the orientation of the will that gives priority to the rational incentive (duty); "evil" is the orientation in which the sensible incentive (self-love) has the upper hand. The former is "good", because it is a precondition for the establishment of a moral community (a kingdom of ends in which an individual's happiness is proportional to his morality). The latter is "evil", because it thwarts any such attempt, leading to what I call a "jungle of means" (an institutional order in which each member does as he pleases). Since both incentives are constitutive of the human will, no matter what order of priority an individual has chosen, the opposite order remains always possible for her. This I take to be Kant's sobering lesson against our moral self-righteousness.
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