Kant on Feelings, Sensations and the Gap Between Rationality and Morality

Abstract

AbstractIn §3 of the Critique of Judgement Kant argues that if the feeling of pleasure were a sensation distinct from whatever representation gives rise to the feeling, then we would be – in the terminology of the Metaphysics of Morals – rational beings (vernünftige Wesen) but not moral beings (Vernunftwesen); we would inescapably (and blamelessly) be hedonists. I reconstruct this at first glance strange argument and suggest, first, that Kant’s actual view of pleasure is an attitudinal theory that avoids the problem of hedonism. Second, the argument of §3 is to be understood in the context of Kant’s emphasis on moral feeling and its cultivation in his writings since the Critique of Practical Reason.