Kant’s Analysis of Obligation

Abstract

One of the debates of recent moral philosophy concerns the question whether moral judgments express internar' or external reasons.1 Ac cording to internalists, if someone knows or accepts moral judgment then she must have motive for acting on it. The motive is part of the content of the judgment: the reason why the action is right is reason for doing it. Ac cording to externalists, this is not necessarily so: there could be case in which I understand both that and why it is right for me to do something, and yet have no motive for doing it. Since most of us believe that action's being right is reason for doing it, internalism seems more plausible. It cap tures one element of our sense that moral judgments have normative force: they are motivating. But some philosophers believe that internalism, if cor rect, would also impose restriction on moral reasons. If moral reasons are to motivate, they must spring from agent's personal desires and com mitments.2 This is unappealing, for unless the desires and commitments that motivate moral conduct are universal and inescapable, it cannot be re quired of everyone. And this leaves out the other element of our sense that moral judgments have normative force: they are binding. Some internalists, however, have argued that the force of internalism cuts the other way. If moral reasons must motivate, and I show you that action is morally right, I have ipso facto provided you with motive for doing it. Moral reasons motivate because they are perceived as binding.3 A good person, ac cording to these internalists, does the right thing because it is the right thing, or acts from the motive of duty. Many of the moves in the contemporary debate were anticipated in the debate between the Rationalists and the Sentimentalists of the eighteenth century. At the center of their dispute was the notion of obligation, term they used primarily to refer to the normativity of duty. The term obliga tion is source of confusion, because an is sometimes used loosely as synonym for a duty, required action. But obligation refers not so much to the action as to the requiredness of the action, to its normative pull. We say that we feel obliged, or are under obligation, to express our sense that the claims of morality are claims on us. The idea that moral conduct is obligatory, like the idea that moral judgments express in