UC San Diego

This dissertation investigates Kant’s explanation of evil action. Dominant ‘intellectualist’ readings of Kant’s action theory sharply separate rational judgment from motivation and argue that agents only act on motivations which they judge to be good. This yields implausible explanations of evil action and unduly downplays Kant’s well-developed efficient-causal theory of motivation. I develop and defend an alternative ‘layered conativist’ interpretation. It is conativist in that our actions are ultimately caused by our strongest desires. It is layered in that both efficient-causal motivation and normative judgment contribute to determining what our strongest desires are. Far from being isolated, the interaction between these ‘layers’ explains why we act as we do. This interaction is made possible by Kant’s radical view that we freely choose our own nature and are thereby responsible for our motivations. The result is a more well-rounded view of human agency, which does better justice to the roles of feeling and motivation in Kant’s moral theory and explains a wider range of evil actions.Part I develops a new layered reading of Kant’s action theory. At the ‘efficient-causal’ layer, we are determined to act by our strongest motivating grounds, which are always based on feeling. At the ‘normative’ layer, we formulate ‘maxims’ which express our endorsement of motivating grounds as good. A special motivating ground, ‘character’, mediates between the two layers. Part II argues that agents freely choose their own nature at a third, ‘intelligible’ layer. I offer the first metaphysically robust explanation of how it is possible for this choice to be outside of time and yet subject to change. This intelligible choice for good or evil connects with our particular sensible nature in Kant’s oft-neglected concept of ‘heart.’ Morality accordingly must speak not just to our reason, but our whole heart. Part III shows how the resulting picture explains the range of evil actions. Reading Kant’s three ‘stages’ of evil as different stages of the heart yields a comprehensive taxonomy of evil action. In particular, layered conativism naturally and plausibly explains the first stage, ‘frailty’ or weakness of will, which extant interpretations have struggled to account for.