What Kant Might Have Said: Moral Worth and the Overdetermination of Dutiful Action

Abstract

M Y purpose is to account for some oddities in what Kant did and did not say about worth, and for another in what commentators tell us about his intent. The stone with which hope to dispatch these several birds is-as one would expect a philosopher's stone to be-a distinction. distinguish between two things Kant might have had in mind under the heading of moral worth. They come readily to mind when one both takes account of what he actually said about it and notices a fact which he did not seem to notice: namely, that dutiful actionaction which, whatever its motive, fulfills a duty-can be overdetermined, and determined in particular by both respect for duty and some consortium of inclinations and prudence. It may be otiose to begin by reminding the reader of another and more familiar distinction-that which Kant draws between an action's conforming to duty and its having moral worth-but since such distinguished commentators as Broad, Sidgwick, and Ross have so seriously misrepresented Kant when they discussed these notions,' a few words on them seem advisable. The first formulation of the Categorical Imperative is: I should never act in such a way that could not will that my