Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on Motivation, Agency and the Formation of a Higher Self

302 Pages·2011·1.29 MB·English

by  Ryan Beaton

Anti-Utilitarians: Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
on Motivation, Agency and the Formation of a Higher Self
by
Ryan Stuart Beaton
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Ryan Stuart Beaton 2011
Anti-Utilitarians: Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
on Motivation, Agency and the Formation of a Higher Self
Ryan Stuart Beaton
Doctorate of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
2011
Abstract
This thesis examines the moral philosophical commitments that Kant, Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche advance in their respective oppositions to utilitarianism. Though not always under that title,
all three reject the claim that promoting happiness is the ultimate end that we pursue, or ought to
pursue, through moral principles and values. Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche see this rejection
reflected in human nature itself. Each develops a distinctive conception of 'higher self,' or of higher
purposes already belonging, in some sense, to each of us, in accordance with which we ought to shape
our character. Self-formation, not the mere pursuit of happiness (whether our own or that of others), is
thus our true moral project. I focus on each philosopher's account of agency and motivation as the locus
in which this view of morality is developed, highlighting the differences that emerge from the details of
their respective accounts.
This thesis shows that a tight relation between cognition and motive feeling is central, though in
different ways, for Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to the motivational structure of those actions
through which we develop moral character. According to Kant, recognition of being bound by the
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moral law (our 'practical cognition' of freedom) is indissolubly linked to the feeling of respect for it,
which in turn is explicable only through such recognition. For Schopenhauer, the 'intuitive cognition'
that our existence as distinct individuals is illusory is the feeling of compassion.
Nietzsche radically expands this point, arguing that, in every act of will, the motive feeling and
guiding cognition are uniquely linked. Only a superficial grasp of human motivation supports the idea
that pleasure and pain are the common motive forces underlying all our actions. The inner conflict in
human nature, the creative tension in self-formation, is not, for Nietzsche, that between a uniquely
moral form of motivation and a 'lower' instrumental pursuit of pleasure. Rather, this inner tension,
expressed most strikingly and distressingly in extreme ascetic and guilt-ridden strands of Christian
morality, is the product of a complex historical conflict between two different modes of behavioural
selection – our evolutionary development and the processes of socialization.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my supervising committee for their invaluable help and support. It has
been a great pleasure to work with my supervisor, Amy Mullin. I’m deeply grateful for her ever prompt
and insightful comments and suggestions, for many illuminating discussions, and most of all for her
investment in and attention to this project. I could not have asked for more in a supervisor. To Paul
Franks, on my supervising committee, I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to take a number of
his graduate seminars, both officially and unofficially, during my years in the PhD program. To
Rebecca Comay, also on my supervising committee, I’m forever grateful for an engaging Nietzsche
reading course in the summer of 2006, which launched this project.
I would also like to thank the entire faculty and staff from the Department of Philosophy, and
fellow graduate students during my time here, for a wonderfully stimulating research environment. A
special thanks to Margaret Opoku-Pare for her friendly and gracious help, with all problems big and
small.
Finally, I would like to thank SSHRC and the University of Toronto for the financial support
that allowed me to pursue this research.
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Table of Contents
Abstract..................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgments.................................................................................iv
Abbreviations........................................................................................vi
Introduction............................................................................................1
Chapter 1: The Kantian Highest Good
and Competing Conceptions of Freedom.........................16
Chapter 2: Schopenhauer on Kant, and the Pure Knowing Subject...68
Chapter 3: Evolution and Socialization: Nietzsche on
Conflicting Modes of Behavioural Selection...................150
Chapter 4: Nietzsche on the Will to Truth.........................................236
Conclusion.........................................................................................282
Bibliography.......................................................................................292
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Abbreviations
Kant, Immanuel
Unless otherwise indicated, citations to Kant are from the standard Akademie collection:
Königlichen Preußischen (later Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), 1900-, Kants
gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: Georg Reimer (later Walter De Gruyter).
I use the following abbreviations for Kant's individual works.
G – Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals)
KpV – Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason)
KrV – Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason)
KU – Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the Power of Judgment)
Religion – Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Religion within the Bounds of
Bare Reason)
Schopenhauer, Arthur
Unless otherwise indicated, citations to Schopenhauer are from:
Arthur Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Arthur Hübscher, Eberhard Brockhaus Verlag,
Wiesbaden, 1972.
I use the following abbreviations for Schopenhauer's individual works.
BM – Über die Grundlage der Moral (On the Basis of Morality)
VW – Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (On the Fourfold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason)
WWV – Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung 1. Band (The World as Will and Representation volume 1)
WWV v2 – Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung 2. Band (The World as Will and Representation volume 2)
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Unless otherwise indicated, citations to Nietzsche are from:
Nietzsche Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari, de Gruyter, Berlin 1967-
2006.
I use the following abbreviations for Nietzsche's individual works:
AC – Der Antichrist (The Antichrist)
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FW – Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Gay Science)
GD – Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols)
GM – Zur Genealogie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals)
JGB – Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil)
M – Morgenröte (Daybreak)
Z – Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
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1
Introduction
This thesis looks at Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche making their stand against utilitarianism.
In broadest possible terms, utilitarianism, as a moral philosophy, holds that promoting general
happiness is the ultimate goal and guiding principle of morally good action. Utilitarianism takes as its
foundation the rock solid empirical fact that, barring tragic or bizarre circumstances, every human
being has a strong and abiding interest in her own personal happiness. This interest is not held
constantly in mind. Clearly we don't keep personal happiness uninterruptedly before our eyes, in
making everyday decisions and in generally going about our lives. But if we imagine someone taking a
broad look at his life – in particular, at his long-term goals, at the important relationships in his life, at
his major personal commitments and potential life-changing decisions – and telling us that personal
happiness doesn't play a central role in shaping his deliberations about what to do with his life, we're
likely to think he's lying to us or to himself, or seriously ill.
This obviously is not a matter of being selfish – that will depend on the particular ends that an
individual thinks make up personal happiness – but simply a central element of our existence as agents
who have to make countless decisions about how to live our lives, from the most trivial daily choices to
life-long commitments. In fact, the interest in personal happiness is so central an element of our agency
that we would be hard-pressed to make any sense of human agency without it. It seems a reasonable
view, then, that any minimally cooperating and mutually respecting group of people will share a
common interest in their general happiness, i.e., in the sum of the personal happiness of individuals in
the group.
For the philosopher, there are, of course, many questions that spring to mind here. What exactly
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do we mean by personal happiness? Is there some objective list of necessary or sufficient elements of
personal happiness? Or is it essentially a subjective matter of individuals' inclinations and sources of
pleasure? Is it simply the aggregate of an individual's wants or desires? Is that tautologous? How does
personal happiness relate to general happiness? Can the personal happiness of individuals –
'happinesses'? – be summed? Does the interest of a group, or of society – or perhaps of humanity at
large – in promoting general happiness really follow from the interest of each individual in her own
personal happiness? Do we not need moral principles precisely to constrain the individual's interest in
personal happiness, moral principles that therefore seem external to, at least potentially opposed to, the
interest in personal happiness?
These are interesting and important questions. But they are not my questions in this thesis. The
resistance utilitarianism encounters in Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche doesn't turn on the details
with which we flesh out the basic utilitarian intuition1 – and I'm interested here precisely in the
resistance of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to the basic utilitarian intuition. Their resistance is
interesting, in the first instance, for the form it does not take.
Historically, the main opposition to the basic utilitarian intuition, at least insofar as that
opposition was articulated on moral grounds, came from religious commitments, or from (more or less
closely related) traditional considerations of social and political authority. So long as faith in God
grounds the moral world view, so long as the social order determines right and wrong, deliberations
about moral duty are not likely to start with the interest of the individual in personal happiness.
However, absent strong religious authority and entrenched traditional social and political norms,
1 Mainly for this reason, I'm putting off, very briefly, addressing the fact that Kant and Schopenhauer do not directly
oppose anything called 'utilitarianism.' Nonetheless, both explicitly oppose promotion of general happiness as an
ultimate moral ideal, i.e., they oppose the basic utilitarian intuition discussed here. Moreover, their rejection of what they
call 'eudaemonism,' is closely related to their rejection of utilitarian thinking, and in the context of more general
discussion, as in this introduction, I will use 'utilitarianism' and 'eudaemonism' roughly interchangeably, though this may
seem especially strange to any reader who thinks of eudaemonism primarily in terms of ancient ethical theories. I take
up these points in chapters 1 and 2.
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reasons for opposing utilitarianism are far from obvious.
If there is no divine or transcendent moral authority, no social order clearly sanctioned by
nature, then we seemingly have nowhere else to turn for guiding principles of choice and action than to
the kinds of desires and aspirations that we have both as individuals and as a society. Again, there are
many difficult questions lurking here for the utilitarian, which she can only answer by articulating
detailed conceptions of individual and general happiness, and of the relation between them. But it
seems eminently plausible that we would want to adopt principles that offer something like maximum
satisfaction of the desires and aspirations in our deliberations about morality. At the most general level,
then, we will want principles that promote harmony between the individual's interest in her personal
happiness and her interest in general happiness, and that define as right, or morally good, those actions
that tend to increase general happiness, and thereby the happiness of individuals. In other words, we
will adopt core utilitarian principles.
Yet Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche all reject this general approach to questions of moral
value and duty, and none of them looks to religion or to the weight of tradition to justify his rejection.
They do not object to this or that element or nuance of the utilitarian view I've just presented it. Each of
them insists that this way of approaching morality, or more generally, of approaching the question as to
how we should live our lives (and the endless choices, big and small, that this involves), is
fundamentally wrong. The burden, it seems to me, is on them to justify their rejection of utilitarianism,
on whose side lie the basic moral intuition and considerations outlined above. There is something
provocative, if not offensive, about the denial of the basic utilitarian moral intuition. Undoubtedly, a
sense of having been provoked or offended runs through much of the criticism directed at the moral
philosophies of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
I confess that I find much of what Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche have to say in opposition
to utilitarianism appealing. My primary aim in writing this thesis has been to articulate just what they