Kant’s Duty to Make Virtue Widely Loved

Abstract

This article examines an appendix to the Doctrine of Virtue which has received little attention. I argue that this passage suggests that Kant makes it a duty, internal to his system of duties, to ‘join the graces with virtue’ and so to ‘make virtue widely loved’ (MM, 6: 473). The duty to make virtue widely loved obligates us to bring the standards of respectability, and so the social graces, into a formal agreement with what morality demands of us, such that the social graces give the illusion of virtue. The existence of such a duty can answer Schiller’s persistent objection that Kant’s ethics scares away the Graces with Duty.

1. Introduction

One of the most persistent objections to Kant’s ethics is the implausibility, and indeed the unattractiveness, of its apparent moral rigorism. Moral rigorism is understood as the presentation of duties as strict rules demanding our adherence without exception and with motivational purity. The virtuous Kantian is thus painted as a bloodless dogmatist, joylessly adhering to the strict demands of reason. This view is perhaps most famously expressed by Friedrich Schiller in On Grace and Dignity. ¹ Schiller, importantly, has no objection to the substance of Kant’s ethics and suggests that ‘the chief doctrines in the Kantian system, through their proofs, should be convincing for all thinking men’ (Schiller 1922: 130). Rather, Schiller objects to the manner in which Kant presents his ethics: ‘In Kantian moral philosophy, the idea of duty is presented with a severity which frightens all the Graces away, and a weak reason might easily attempt to seek moral perfection on the path of a gloomy and monkish asceticism’ (pp. 130–1). Here, the problem that Schiller points to is the unattractiveness of the moral law. ²

The severity of this picture has been alleviated by recent scholarship which attempts to not only qualify Kant’s demand for motivational purity but also to point out the compatibility with and importance of all kinds of ‘impure’ elements within a strict moral ideal. ³ Indeed, there has been an abundance of scholarly work addressing the ‘impure’ aspect of Kant’s philosophy, often called moral anthropology, in the past thirty years. This literature helpfully challenges the perceived dichotomy between the ideal standards of the moral law and the psychological, social and emotional lives of actual human beings. The aim of this literature is to associate Kant’s system of duty to the empirically informed, and so ‘impure’ aspects of human life. ⁴ However, this relationship between the demands of morality and empirically informed human life remains at the level of association, in which the impure elements are seen to be compatible with or complementary to our duties as rational beings.

The fact that I am taking as my topic a duty, and that the relevant description appears as part of the Kantian metaphysical definition of duties, serves to distinguish my inquiry from this scholarship, even though elements of my discussion overlap with it. Many of these accounts accomplish much in pointing out that Kant’s moral philosophy is compatible with and is even benefited by social grace and beauty. ⁵ Indeed, it has been shown that ‘Kant takes social graces seriously, and moreover, takes them seriously for moral reasons’ (Stohr 2016: 277).

Yet, what has been overlooked in the literature is the fact that Kant asserts that we have a duty to make virtue widely loved by actively joining the graces with virtue. By this I mean that there is a distinct duty, of a unique type, which obligates us to bring the standards of respectability into a formal agreement with what morality demands of us. Such a duty would advance the Kantian defence of Schiller’s persistent objection by making the association of virtue and the social graces an internal element of what the law of virtue requires, where the task of making virtue widely loved is part of the metaphysical system of duties. The goal of this article is not to add to the work on Kant’s anthropology or the general complementary relation between social grace and morality, but rather to interpret what Kant could mean by a duty to make virtue widely loved, and solve some puzzles that arise as a result. ⁶

Kant’s account of the duty to make virtue widely loved is found in the Doctrine of Virtue. Kant includes a peculiar appendix at the end of the Doctrine of Elements, titled ‘On the Virtues of Social Intercourse’. In this appendix, he introduces a unique duty to make virtue widely loved. Kant claims that one has a duty ‘to oneself as well as to others not to isolate oneself but to use one’s moral perfections in social intercourse’ (MM, 6: 473). ⁷ Kant then gives an explanation as to what this duty consists in:

While making oneself a fixed centre of one’s principles, one ought to regard this circle drawn around one as also forming a part of an all-inclusive circle of those who, in their disposition, are citizens of the world – not exactly in order to promote as the end what is best for the world but only to cultivate what leads indirectly to this end: to cultivate reciprocity – agreeableness, tolerance, mutual love and respect (affability and propriety, humanitas aesthetica et decorum) and so join the graces with virtue (und so der Tugend die Grazien beizugesellen). To bring this about is itself a duty of virtue.

These are, indeed, only externals or by-products (parerga), which give a beautiful illusion (schönen Schein) resembling virtue that is also not deceptive since everyone knows how it must be taken. Affability, sociability, courtesy, hospitality and gentleness (in disagreeing without quarrelling) are, indeed, only tokens; yet they promote the feeling for virtue itself by a striving to bring this illusion as near as possible to the truth. By all of these, which are merely manners one is obligated to show in social intercourse, one binds others too; and so they still promote a virtuous disposition by at least making virtue widely loved (indem sie die Tugend beliebt machen ⁸ ). (MM, 6: 473–4, my translation)

Patrick Frierson, in one of the rare references to this passage, has related the appendix to a discussion of politeness and moral illusion in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. However, Frierson does not call attention to the unique duty to join the graces with virtue and to bind others to the social expectation of virtue. Instead, he characterizes this as ‘the duty to be polite’ and concludes that the purpose of the passage is ‘simply to point out the obligation that follows from certain anthropological facts’ (Frierson 2005: 107). Unsurprisingly then, Frierson insists that we turn quickly from the Metaphysics of Morals to the Anthropology to answer the questions of how and why politeness is important to morality. However, the duty laid out in this passage is not the ‘duty to be polite’. The use of ‘duty’ (Pflicht) is not in connection with polite behaviour itself but rather ‘to use one’s moral perfections in social intercourse’ and to cultivate a ‘disposition of reciprocity’ by joining (beizugesellen) the graces with virtue (MM, 6: 473). Kant’s insistence here is not just the descriptive anthropological claim that politeness is an aid to morality or that the duty here is simply a consequence of this anthropological observation. Rather, the passage in the Doctrine of Virtue implies a duty to create the connection between the social graces and virtue resulting in virtue being widely loved (beliebt).

Similarly, Karen Stohr, while citing this passage as evidence, claims that Kant takes creating and sustaining illusions to often be morally valuable (Stohr 2014: 8–9). However, she moves quickly on from the passage itself without discussing the fact that it provides a distinct duty to actively join the graces with virtue. Indeed, she ends up reducing the duty to make virtue widely loved to something like the duty for self-improvement (p. 14). In a later paper, Stohr again cites the passage and says, ‘This is a complex passage and not easy to interpret, but it certainly shows that Kant takes the social graces seriously and moreover, takes them seriously for moral reasons’ (Stohr 2016: 277). Here Stohr acknowledges that the passage in question is complex and requires more attention than she can give it, but only draws the more general point about the association between social graces and morality. ⁹

Again, my emphasis is on the fact that the passage points to a distinct duty to join the graces with virtue. As we will see, this does not mean that morality is brought into conformity with the demands of taste, neither that they passively overlap, but rather that virtue stands on its own and that decorum is brought into harmony with it. As Kant says in the Vigilantius lectures, ‘Decorum must be founded on duty, and the latter may be brought into connection with decorum, as an essential component of duty; as Schiller says, we must couple virtue with grace’ (27: 707). Thus the duty to make virtue widely loved is a direct response to Schiller’s charge of monkish morality, which incorporates Schiller’s insistence that virtue and the graces must not be antagonistic but ought to be brought into agreement.

In section 2, I will explain what it means for the duty to make virtue widely loved to be a duty that is self- and other-regarding, its unique architectonic place in the Doctrine of Virtue, as well as the duty’s relation to direct and indirect duties. This will give us the type of the duty. In section 3, I will turn to the content of the duty to show what exactly it is that we are obligated to. I will make a brief detour here to clarify two important concepts with relation to the duty: popularity and illusion. I will then turn more directly to what the duty requires of us. In section 4, I will look to the aim of widely loved virtue to create a ‘disposition of reciprocity’ and how this leads to ‘what is best for the world’.

2. What type of duty is the duty to make virtue widely loved?

2.1 Duty to oneself and others

The passage in the Metaphysics of Morals occurs as an appendix to part II of the Doctrine of Elements in the Tugendlehre. This is the division of the Doctrine of Virtue meant to deal with duties to others. Duties to others are categorized as either duties of love or duties of respect. Duties of love are generally duties of benevolence, and in carrying out duties of love, I put you under the expectation of some reciprocation of my action (gratitude). Duties of respect, on the other hand, are owed to others in virtue of their dignity (MM, 6: 448). Interestingly, our passage in the Metaphysics of Morals seems to cut across both the division of duties of virtue (duties to oneself and duties to others) and the division of duties to others (duties of love and duties of respect).

Let us look at the former division first. The passage speaks of, ‘a duty to oneself as well as to others’ (MM, 6: 473). It is unclear what Kant could mean, as he had not defined duties that span this division earlier in the Tugendlehre. However, Kant’s characterization of the division does not exclude duties that span duties to oneself and duties to others. Both divisions are under the wider category ‘Duties of human beings to human beings’ as distinguished from ‘Duties to beings other than human beings’ (6: 413). This category remains undefined by Kant other than for its inclusion of both other- and self-regarding duties. However, insofar as the duty to make virtue widely loved is both self- and other-regarding, it must fall into this general category. Therefore, we might have duties that are duties to human beings as such that would be duties to ourselves and to others. One way of understanding this is to think of them as duties to a community of which you are a part, as in the duty of political leaders to promote the social welfare of their state. Here the duty is obviously other-regarding but must also be self-regarding insofar as I must regard myself as an active part of the overall welfare of the state, and capable of making critical evaluations of the welfare of the state, in order to make judgements as a member of the community. The idea here is that the self- and other-regarding elements balance each other, resulting in a more nuanced picture. By ‘balance’ I mean that they prevent one aspect (self- or other-regarding) from being overemphasized at the expense of the other.

To see better how this might work, let us turn back to our passage. We will here build up the self- and other-regarding elements in order to see how they relate to each other in the whole, beginning with the self-regarding elements.

The passage states that ‘while making oneself a fixed centre of one’s principles, one ought to regard this circle drawn around one as also forming part of an all-inclusive circle’ (MM, 6: 473). I take ‘making oneself a fixed centre of one’s principles’ to be referring generally to the notion that we should adopt our own maxims. Thus, what it means to make oneself the fixed centre of one’s principles is to remain the author of our moral judgements (6: 438). This is important because it suggests that the duty to make virtue widely loved does not involve merely conforming to social norms. Elsewhere, Kant expresses this concern by warning that respectability can cause us to see as scandalous things that are in themselves good, and therefore mistake ‘what is unusual to be impermissible as well’. This would be a degeneration of the respect of others into ‘blind imitation … since such a tyranny of folk customs would be contrary to his duty to himself’ (6: 464). Making oneself the centre of one’s moral judgements is the limitation on ‘respectability’ which ensures that one does not inappropriately idolize the opinions of others. This is a duty to oneself, to maintain relative authority over one’s moral judgements.

However, now we must look at the other-regarding elements of the duty to make virtue widely loved. Kant insists that one ought not simply be the fixed centre but must see oneself as part of an ‘all-inclusive circle’. Such an extension can be seen as a duty toward others, to create a system of principles (mutual love and respect) that includes oneself and others. Indeed, the very nature of our duties toward others insists that we must extend our moral considerations outward toward a community of others.

Furthermore, the duty to make virtue widely loved promotes ‘mutual love and respect’, spanning across the distinction between duties of love and duties of respect. This is the case because, as with duties of love, in performing the duty one ‘binds others’ and therefore puts others under social obligation for reciprocation. Performing the duty of beneficence, for instance, puts another under the obligation of the duty of gratitude. The duty to make virtue widely loved is also of this character because, by our affability, sociability and so forth, we bind others to reciprocate this disposition. Furthermore, the duty to make virtue widely loved also entails mutual respect. This is because creating an all-inclusive circle involves recognizing the dignity in other human beings. Recognition of this dignity means that ‘every human being has a legitimate claim to respect from his fellow human beings and is in turn bound to respect every other’ (MM, 6: 462). To respect another is, at least in part, to ‘suppose that his judgement must yet contain some truth and seek this out’ and at the same time to uncover and correct ‘deceptive illusions (trüglichen Schein)’ which cause error in his judgement to preserve ‘respect in his own understanding’ (6: 463). Thus, my duty to respect others as moral beings means having respect for their own status as capable of moral judgement, and by extension the judgements they pass on my moral behaviour.

Yet, the extension outward has limits. What Kant calls ‘respectability’ (honestas externa) ¹⁰ can also cause errors of judgement if we take it too seriously. It does contribute to the consciousness of the law and foster love and respect for the law. However, respectability and the social graces themselves are always equally likely to lead to moral corruption by causing us to fall into error: mistaking the unusual for the impermissible. There is a precarious balance to be struck between these two duties: the duty to oneself as author of one’s moral judgements and the duty to gain the respect of others as moral agents. Into this tension Kant introduces the duty to make virtue widely loved. This duty to ourselves and others is a duty to make morality accessible to others and ourselves, through the demands of respectability, by joining social grace and virtue as closely as possible.

The standards of respectability remain shallow and confused unless we can anchor the demand for affection in the a priori insights of a metaphysics of morals. The duty to make virtue widely loved allows virtue to stand on its own and joins it with social graces without changing what morality demands of us. This explains why the duty to make virtue widely loved stands as an appendix to the whole Doctrine of Elements. It can come only after insight into what morality demands. Therefore, the duty to make virtue widely loved stands in a unique place in Kant’s system of duties as a duty that must follow a metaphysics of morals and is therefore about Kant’s moral system as a whole.

2.2 Indirect versus direct duty

In the passage quoted at the beginning Kant makes a curious reference to humanitas aesthetica when speaking about the person shaped by the graces. This term is intimately tied to Kant’s discussion of the duty to sympathetic love elsewhere in the Doctrine of Virtue where he clearly states that there cannot be duties to humanitas aesthetica (MM, 6: 457). The passage in question also makes reference to the ‘indirectness’ of the duty, which prompts the question whether the duty to make virtue widely loved is a direct or indirect duty. Furthermore, it is important to distinguish the duty to make virtue widely loved from the duty to cultivate sympathetic feelings. From the passage above, regarding feelings of reciprocal love and respect and the cultivation of a disposition, one might expect there to be certain similarities. So it is natural to attempt to clarify the duty to make virtue widely loved with respect to humanitas aesthetica and indirect duties through a discussion of the duty to sympathetic love. I will argue that the duty to make virtue widely loved is structurally similar to the sympathetic duty of love in that it is an active duty which involves a passive receptivity and a direct duty which also involves an indirect duty.

Kant distinguishes between humanitas aesthetica and humanitas practica in order to point out the difference between the natural receptivity of human beings, i.e. receptivity to sharing in feelings of joy or pain (humanitas aesthetica) and, the ‘capacity or the will to share in other’s feelings’ (MM, 6: 456) (humanitas practica). The former is unfree and is ‘communicable (since it is like receptivity to warmth or contagious disease)’ (6: 457). The latter, however, is free; a capacity to will to share in the feeling of others. Fahmy puts it this way, ‘Humanitas aesthetica is the experience of being affectively determined by stimuli in one’s immediate environment, whereas humanitas practica employs the will and is grounded in practical reason’ (Fahmy 2009: 36–7). Humanitas practica requires that we actively communicate, or as Fahmy renders it, participate. It goes beyond the mere receptivity to participation, in this case, in the fates of others. We can be obligated only to humanitas practica.

What does this distinction have to do with the duty to make virtue widely loved? Just as with the sympathetic duty of love, the duty to make virtue widely loved involves more than just giving oneself over to popular taste, but an active participation in the standards of popular taste as such. Fahmy suggests that the duty to participate in the fates of others ‘entails not merely a passive sympathy with their plight, but rather an active attitude of concern, which expresses itself in open communication’ (Fahmy 2009: 43). Similarly, the duty to make virtue widely loved, because it is an obligation, will have to be an active duty which involves participation in, and not just receptivity to, the standards of respectability or popular taste. The latter case would only concern our being affected more or less strongly by various stimuli, in this case feeling of being respected by others. However, the duty to make virtue widely loved, insofar as it is a duty, must be an active duty to some wilful action. Indeed, the duty to make virtue widely loved is the product of an intentional activity to join the graces with virtue which involves, as we shall see, the participation in changing public standards of respectability to better reflect what morality actually demands of us.

Therefore, the duty to make virtue widely loved would be an active duty which addresses our natural receptivity to the feelings or judgements of others. This explains why Kant uses the term humanitas aesthetica in the discussion of the duty to make virtue widely loved, given that the joining the graces with virtue involves the use of our natural receptivity for the promotion of morality.

Furthermore, Fahmy distinguishes between the direct duty to participate in the fate of others and the indirect duty to cultivate one’s sympathetic feelings. The indirect duty to cultivate our feelings entails (1) employing our natural receptivity and eradicating psychological impediments to this receptivity and (2) limiting our feelings/receptive response to those that we can morally endorse (Fahmy 2009: 40). Thus, the indirect duty to cultivate our sympathetic feelings boils down to the duty to cultivate a capacity to respond appropriately to the feelings of others. ¹¹ Kant points out that the cultivation of this capacity is a means toward the active and direct duty to participate in the fate of others. One can do this only after one has a cultivated capacity to respond appropriately to the feelings of others. Thus, the sympathetic duty of love, Fahmy points out, includes both a direct and indirect duty; the indirect duty is the means to the fulfilment of the direct duty.

What does all this have to do with the duty to make virtue widely loved? Like the duty to sympathetic love, the duty to make virtue widely loved is an indirect duty that involves a direct duty. The passage in question mentions both the direct duty to promote what is best for the world and the indirect duty to make virtue widely loved (to join the graces with virtue). Kant gives an enigmatic characterization of the relationship between the two, suggesting that to join grace with virtue does not ‘promote as an end what is best for the world but only to cultivate what leads indirectly to this end’ (MM, 6: 473). Thus, the duty to make virtue widely loved, the duty to join graces with virtue, is an indirect means for promoting what is best for the world. The duty to make virtue widely loved is a means, but only an indirect means, to fulfilling the direct duty. By ‘indirect’ Kant is signalling the fact that this duty can only produce ‘tokens’ or moral illusions, as will be explained in more detail below. The duty to make virtue widely loved cannot directly contribute to the promotion of what is best for the world because it can only promote these external illusions of virtue and not directly a virtuous disposition. ¹² To promote the virtuous disposition directly would be to take into account the motivational ground of the maxim, which is not captured here. ¹³ Thus, when Kant says that we can promote a virtuous disposition by ‘at least making virtue widely loved’ (6: 474) we should take him to mean that this is only an indirect promotion. We will learn more about how this end is indirectly promoted in the last section.

3. What is the duty to make virtue widely loved?

In the previous section, we found that the duty to make virtue widely loved is an active but indirect duty to ourselves and others. This showed the particular place that this duty has in relation to Kant’s system of duties. Now we will turn to the content of the duty. Kant says that the duty to make virtue widely loved is to ‘not isolate oneself’ but enter into social intercourse and ‘join the graces with virtue (der Tugend die Grazien beizugesellen)’. This is the action through which virtue becomes widely loved. But what does it mean to join the graces with virtue? Here I will begin to answer this question by first taking a clarificatory detour to positions outside the Doctrine of Virtue and then address the two imperatives in the passage: ‘do not isolate oneself’ and ‘join the graces with virtue’.

3.1 Popularity and deception

In order to answer the question of what the duty to make virtue widely loved entails, we will need to briefly clarify two points with respect to Kant’s works outside the Doctrine of Virtue. Namely, philosophical popularity in the Groundwork and permissible moral illusions in the Anthropology.

Popularity of a different kind

At first glance, the duty to make virtue widely loved might sound like some promotional activity for the moral law which flies in the face of Kant’s discussion of popular morality in the Groundwork.

In section two of the Groundwork Kant contrasts his own methodology to popular morality, apparently defining popular morality as the opposite of his own system. Kant’s aim is to separate his own foundations of the moral law, a priori principles of reason, from views that follow popular taste, which has its foundations in experience (G, 4: 410). Kant says that his own investigation must abstract from experiential concerns or public taste, thereby ‘putting off the public, which demands popularity’ (ibid.). We might worry that Kant’s position here excludes the possibility of making virtue widely loved. However, his position is more complicated.

Kant does not downplay the movement to popularity. He insists that ‘the descending to popular concepts is certainly very commendable, provided the ascent to the principles of pure reason has first taken place and has been carried through to complete satisfaction’ (G, 4: 409–10).

Thus, what Kant is criticizing is not popularity per se but the notion that popularity should play a role before the a priori investigation into the demands of the moral law. Such a mistake leads only to shallow and confusing systems of morality which can only falsely claim true philosophic popularity. What Kant calls ‘true philosophic popularity’ (wahren philosophischen Popularität) or ‘rightly popular’ (recht populär) must be the result of the philosophical system that follows the correct procedure of grounding objective moral truths in pure reason and only afterward descending to popular concepts in order to provide access to, or entrance into (Eingang), the insights gained by a priori investigations. ¹⁴

Indeed, Kant again affirms ‘every philosophic teaching [must] be capable of being made Popular (Popularität) (that is, of being made sufficiently clear to the senses to be communicated to everyone)’ before proceeding to insist that the methodology in the Metaphysics of Morals must be scholastic precision rather than popularity (MM, 6: 206). ¹⁵ Here the insistence is on the ability to communicate the findings of the scholastic inquiry through the association of these insights with the sensible nature of man and common concepts. Kant seems to have the Groundwork project in mind here, where the scholastic approach must proceed before the necessary move to make these insights not only clear but attractive.

However, Kant’s use of ‘Popularity’ (Populär/Popularität) in this sense should be distinguished from making virtue widely loved (beliebt). Kant’s concern in the Groundwork and the preface to the Metaphysics of Morals is with popular concepts as opposed to specialist, or ‘scholastic’, presentations. This is how we would use the term ‘popular’ in reference to a ‘popular piece of writing’ or ‘pop science’. The idea here is to change the presentation by appealing to popular concepts. Yet, this does not mean that morality is then widely loved in the sense of being widely favoured. The duty to make virtue widely loved concerns an affective, rather than an epistemic popularity. What we are concerned with here is the attractiveness of the moral law, not the accessibility of specialist concepts. Therefore, whatever concerns Kant has about the popular presentation of morality, or making the discoveries of the metaphysical inquiry into morals epistemically accessible to the people, the idea of popularity here should be distinguished from it.

Yet, Kant’s general point is obviously that any promotional activity of making morality popular is possible, and perhaps necessary, after the proper establishment of a priori laws. This is true for both popularity as Kant intends it here and the duty to make virtue widely loved.

Deception and illusion

The duty to make virtue widely loved suggests that we join the graces with virtue by means of ‘beautiful moral illusions’. Thus, before we specify what it means to join the graces with virtue we need to establish the permissibility of moral illusions. Given Kant’s apparent stance on the impermissibility of deception, we have to establish the difference between illusion and deception as well as what it is that makes illusion permissible. I will first consider Kant’s Anthropology.

In the Anthropology, Kant makes an important distinction between two types of delusion: illusion ¹⁶ and deception (Betrug) (Anth, 7: 149). He defines a delusion ¹⁷ as ‘regarding the representation of a thing as equivalent to the thing itself’ (Rel, 6: 168). Illusion is ‘that delusion which persists even though one knows that the supposed object is not real’, while deception occurs if ‘as soon as one knows how the object is constituted the illusion also immediately ceases’ (Anth, 7: 149–50). Kant characterizes illusions as pleasant and entertaining games, such as a painting where the figures appear to walk around or the choice of a certain colour of clothing that sets off the face. An illusion is a representation that persists as a sort of enjoyable game despite knowledge of the illusory nature of the representation. A deception is when the representation cannot survive my knowledge of the delusion. Kant gives the example of statues of human beings or animals that are painted with life-like colours. We are deceived by the appearance into thinking that they are living, but as soon as we realize that this appearance is a delusion and they are only well-painted statues, the deception cannot persist (7: 150). The relevant difference between illusion and deception is the relationship between the delusion and the knowledge of the representation as a delusion. What is important for our purposes is the suggestion that a deception involves the belief that the delusion represents reality (and so disappears upon finding out it is a delusion), and illusion is a game which everyone knows is meant as illusory. Thus, here we learn that there are permissible sorts of illusions.

Perhaps surprisingly, Kant immediately suggests that one type of permissible illusion is moral illusions (erlaubten moralischen Schein). He says that civilized human beings are actors who adopt the ‘illusion of affection, or respect for others, of modesty, and of unselfishness’ (Anth, 7: 151). These illusions are ‘inner practical illusions’ where the subjective motivating cause is taken as objective (7: 275). ¹⁸ The reality is that ‘nature is playing with the human being and spurring him (the subject) to its ends’ and yet the subject ‘stands convinced (objectively) that he has set his own end’ (ibid.). ¹⁹ Kant thinks that these sorts of illusions are not only permissible but important because they counteract deceptive inclinations. Kant gives the example of how the natural inclination to comfort can be deceptive with regard to the moral end by convincing the subject that he is doing nothing wrong in his idleness. ²⁰ This is a deceptive inclination, because it falsely suggests that we need not strive to perfect our moral capacities. We combat this by providing illusions to enliven the mind to activity that ‘cultures the mind’ such as games but also social conversation and the arts (7: 152, 275). Kant insists elsewhere that we must respond to deception of this kind because external coercion is insufficient to combat tricks of the understanding that provide us with, among other things, false shame and hope (Anth-F, 25: 503). It is against this sort of individual and societal forms of self-deceit that it is permissible to use moral illusion (Anth, 7: 152). We can respond with a trick of our own in order for deceptive inclinations to disappear, or at least become less effective in their deception. Moral illusions are permissible insofar as they are means of combating deceptive inclinations and therefore indirectly promote the virtuous disposition. But how is it that they promote a virtuous disposition?

As we have just pointed out, moral illusion and social graces can ‘deceive the deceiver within us’. Kant suggests that by using moral illusion to tame particularly difficult passions we can reveal to ourselves the ability for self-mastery (Selbstbeherrschung). He uses the example of citizens who have ‘desires against each other’ but, at least in appearance, everyone is well-behaved in order to not upset others (Anth-Me, 25: 930). Of course, this might simply be because they need others to achieve their, possibly wicked, ends. However, illusions of social graces work to overcome inclinations by creating conditions that redirect and curtail passionate desires into more productive or at least less destructive pursuits. This suggests the possibility of self-mastery by showing the agent that he is capable of negotiating his passions into some socially acceptable expression.

However, there is another way in which social graces and the illusion of virtue indirectly promote a virtuous disposition. Social graces can give the beautiful illusion of virtue and, therefore, present virtue as an object of love and respect. ²¹ Kant suggests that ‘One who loves the illusion of the good eventually is won over to actually loving the good’ (Anth-Me, 25: 931). When someone appears agreeable and even beautiful in their endeavours, we are inclined to love and respect that person (Anth-F, 25: 504; Anth-Me, 25: 929). The love and respect for people who have the appearance of virtue makes us love the appearance of virtue and makes it easier (more agreeable) to respect the virtue itself. Indeed, the love of the illusion of virtue in others inspires one to adopt these (merely external) virtues for oneself. Thus, by making virtuous action something to be respected and widely loved externally, we might indirectly promote the love of virtue itself.

3.2 Making virtue widely loved

Finally, we now turn directly to what the duty to make virtue widely loved directly involves. Here I will divide the work into two parts. First, I will address Kant’s striking claim, right at the beginning, that we have a (indirect) duty not to isolate ourselves but to use our moral perfections in a social environment. Second, I will finally turn to the task of joining the graces with virtue itself.

Do not isolate yourself

Kant begins his description of the duty to make virtue widely loved by saying that we have a duty (to oneself as well as to others) ‘not to isolate oneself (separatistam agere) but to use one’s moral perfections in social intercourse (officium commercii, sociabilitas)’ (MM, 6: 473). As we will see below, the way that one uses his moral perfections is by joining the graces with virtue. However, here we will briefly focus only on this striking opening line.

The person being addressed here is the moral agent who has ‘moral perfections’ which he can, apparently, hold independent of his interactions with others. However, Kant here insists that the moral agent has a duty to enter into social intercourse with others. This suggests that the moral agent in isolation is ‘incomplete’ in at least two ways: in the development of dispositions which can only be developed with others and in the obligations that the moral person has toward others with respect to his moral perfections.

First, the moral person has a duty to enter into social intercourse and make use of his moral perfections in order to develop certain qualities which he cannot develop in isolation. Kant gives specific examples of reciprocity, agreeableness, tolerance and mutual love and respect. These are only possible if the moral agent enters into social intercourse with others in order to develop them. Insofar as the development of these dispositions is required of me as a moral agent, I cannot take the path of the stoic monk, subjecting myself to strict demands of morality in a dark, unfurnished room. Quite against the severe picture that Schiller’s critique paints of Kant, Kant here insists that the complete moral person has a duty to enter into social intercourse in order to improve himself by developing dispositions of tolerance, reciprocity, etc. ²² The emphasis here is on the moral agent who, while perhaps having acquired moral perfections in isolation, still lacks something that can only be provided through interaction with others. It is a necessary aspect of the moral person that he not only adopt moral maxims with respect to all the duties so far developed in the Doctrine of Elements, but also that he exercise these moral commitments with respect to others. I can have a commitment to beneficence, for instance, but until I enter into social intercourse with others, such a commitment cannot develop into reciprocity with others, or tolerance toward others. The development of these dispositions, which allow me to more subtly and effectively carry out my duties, is possible only in social environments. ²³

Second, not isolating oneself is a duty to others because, as I will explain further in the next section, using my moral perfections in social discourse also benefits others by creating a social expectation of virtue that furthers the moral ends of others. In this sense, we are obligated to not isolate ourselves not merely because it will further our own moral development, but also because having moral perfections obligates us to use them to benefit the moral lives of others. This means that the duty to make virtue widely loved cannot only be a duty to develop dispositions in oneself, or to act politely in company. It might be tempting to see the duty to make virtue widely loved (as Frierson, for example, tends to characterize it) as merely a duty to exercise one’s duty in a polite way. As I have said and will say below, this is a part of the duty. However, stopping here leaves the other-regarding aspect of the duty underdetermined. Entering into social discourse with others is a duty to others as well. This seems to suggest that being a moral agent, or perhaps an agent with moral virtues, obligates one to use moral virtues for the good of others. In social discourse with others, one does this by joining the graces with virtue, not only in one’s own actions, but also in the social expectations of others. Thus, the duty to enter into social discourse cannot be reduced to the duty to self-perfection, nor simply a self-regarding duty. We must also enter into social discourse, and use our moral perfections in social discourse, for the benefit of others, and indeed to promote the moral ends of others.

We will now move on to explore what Kant means by having an obligation to join the graces with virtue in the individual and social sense.

Join graces with virtue

The main task entailed by the duty to make virtue widely loved is to join the graces with virtue, but what does it mean to join the graces with virtue?

Kant indicates what this might mean in the Anthropology in a discussion about how ‘ideal taste’ can contribute to the external advancement of morality, where being well-mannered (gesittet) and respectable are the negative conditions of ideal taste. Here we are told that taste concerns the communication of pleasure and includes the feeling of satisfaction ‘in common with others (sociably)’ (Anth, 7: 244). In order for the satisfaction to be valid not simply for the subject but everyone else, Kant tells us that the satisfaction must ‘contain an a priori principle’. The satisfaction is ‘in the agreement of the subject’s pleasure with the feeling of everyone else according to the universal law. … That is to say, the choice in accordance with this satisfaction, according to its form, comes under the principle of duty’ (ibid.). Kant’s point here is that the satisfaction of being well-liked or respected aids in morality only insofar as the satisfaction is brought under a moral law and thus results in a choice that is formally, though, as I suggest below, not necessarily substantially, under the principle of duty. In other words, the power and demands of social satisfaction must come into ‘formal agreement’ with what morality demands by incorporating an a priori principle. ²⁴

What Kant seems to have in mind is that what social grace and morality demand overlap in their legality but not their morality. Kant continues to insist that being ‘well-mannered’ does not equate to being a morally good person (Anth, 7: 244). The graces are only ‘tokens’ of true virtue (MM, 6: 473). They are like a landscape painting that can be recognized as the Grand Canyon and even evokes feelings similar to what it is like to sit in front of the Grand Canyon. The painting is in some sort of formal agreement with the Grand Canyon; it must be, in order for me to recognize it as such and for it to evoke certain feelings. However, it is obviously also merely a formal agreement: the painting should not be mistaken for the real thing; everyone understands it is an illusion. In keeping with the analogy, the duty to make virtue widely loved is like a duty for artists to bring the painting into greater and greater formal agreement with reality.

Thus, practically, this involves both first-order and second-order actions.

The first-order actions are to act with grace towards others in social settings. Kant gives a list of gracious behaviour such as politeness (Höflichkeit), leniency (Gelindigkeit), affability (Zuganglichkeit), communicativeness (Gesprächlichkeit) and hospitality (Gastfreiheit). He uses these examples of social grace to show the balance that one must have. For example, by politeness Kant seems to mean the holding back of attitudes or opinions even when we are in the right. He gives the example of an author who asks for an opinion about his book and, while you have a negative opinion about the book (even one that you feel is quite right), you decide to keep silent or turn the conversation elsewhere (Eth-C, 27: 420). ²⁵ Yet, communicativeness seems to be a ‘pleasantness to entertain through conversation’ (Refl, 15: 577) but also openness of conversation (MM, 6: 428) that is complementary to the reserve often prompted by politeness (Eth-C, 27: 444). So, there are instances where we should exercise reserve in our opinions, but also be open about them. Furthermore, being lenient or gentle is the ‘reluctance to anger others’ (Refl, 15: 743) and also modesty in dealing with the claims of others (Refl, 15: 487). To be gentle or lenient with others is to be sensitive in evaluating the claims or actions of others and therefore, when we deliver our opinions to those who disagree, do so with a modesty which does not offend. Finally, hospitality complements these other social graces by suggesting that we not just be generous in addressing others but also actually in sharing possessions (PhyG, 9: 421; Anth-D, 25: 236). Kant sums up the balance to be struck nicely by saying that we ought to act ‘neither as flatterers (i.e. essentially fawning sycophants), nor hypocrites (in fear and groaning, in affective form) nor reprimands nor eccentrics. It depends on a certain elegance (Artigkeit) (what the French called elegant de la Coeur) or on a certain delicacy of behaviour’ (Eth-V, 27: 708).

The second-order action has to do with the promotion of these graces, insofar as they are joined with virtue, by binding others to the performance of these actions (MM, 6: 474). We do this by promoting certain kinds of social grace (hospitality, gentleness, sociability, politeness) which are themselves in formal agreement with the moral law. We promote these formally good actions by rewarding, through social satisfaction, performance of these virtues. Social appreciation for the virtuous deployment of these graces, plus the mutual expectation that courtesy will be met with courtesy, binds others to behave in accordance with these formally good behaviours. Promotion of these graces can also be achieved through social environments conducive to their taking root. For example, while warning against the vice of drunkenness, Kant promotes the use of wine in social situations to promote communicativeness (Gesprächlichkeit) among guests (MM, 6: 428; Eth-C, 27: 381). Here and elsewhere he speaks of environments where social interaction is promoted through the cultivation of an environment conducive to social intercourse. ²⁶ Furthermore, second-order actions also include negative, critical aspects. In certain extreme and public cases, this means punishing, through social dissatisfaction and social ostracization, deviations from these virtues or repudiation of the demands of virtue (MM, 6: 474). Here the point seems to be that, if vice is promoted and virtue shamed through social action, we ought to condemn this publicly and remove ourselves socially from a scandal which ‘deprives virtue of its honour, and puts it up for sale to anyone who is rich enough to bribe parasites with pleasures of luxury’ (MM, 6: 474). This sort of scandal limits social graces to the promotion of virtuous action and so prevents us from becoming flatterers or eccentrics. Similarly, we ought to avoid ‘false shame’ and protect those that are subject to it (Eth-V, 27: 707). False shame occurs when social shame outruns what is prohibited by duty and we therefore mistake what is unusual for what is impermissible. Correction of this, by pointing out that the shameful action is permissible under the moral law and therefore should not be met with shame, helps bring social expectations into more formal agreement with morality. Thus, we join graces with virtue by readjusting feelings of false shame and punishing public contempt of virtue.

By promoting these social graces over others, and punishing false shame and scandal, we adjust the overall social framework to better reflect what morality demands of us. Furthermore, we can bring social satisfaction into formal agreement with the moral law, and join the graces with virtue, by criticizing social norms which promote principles not grounded on the moral law, so that what is uncommon is not taken as impermissible. Both the positive and negative aspects are important to join the graces with virtue and therefore to make virtue widely loved.

To recap, the duty to make virtue widely loved is a reciprocal duty to human beings as such. This means that it spans the distinction between duties to oneself and duties to others by incorporating into one the duties to respect oneself as an innate judge and to have respect and love for others and their judgements. The content of the duty is to associate the graces with virtue, which means to bring the demands of decorum, or social grace, into formal agreement with the demands of virtue. By promoting social graces that share a formal resemblance to the demands of the morality, we can readjust the standards of respectability to reflect what morality demands of us. All this means that the duty to make virtue widely loved is a reciprocal duty to human beings to incorporate principles of duty into the feelings of social satisfaction.

3.3 The aim

In this final section, we will address what seems to be the cosmopolitan aim of the passage in question. One might ask, what does Kant mean when he says that the joining of graces with virtue leads indirectly to what is best for the world? Furthermore, how can mere illusions of social grace, social rituals, promote a cosmopolitan end? In order to answer these questions I will draw a helpful analogy with religious rituals as Kant sees them in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason. I do this because the Religion provides us with a discussion of formalities, i.e. social grace, and connects these ‘illusions’ with the cosmopolitan task. For religious rituals, the idea is to represent the ethical or cosmopolitan community. This representation promotes the cosmopolitan end. Thus, we can see how illusory actions can promote cosmopolitan ends by representing the idea of a cosmopolitan community. ²⁷

I will argue that the establishment of a widely loved virtue enlivens feelings of reciprocity and so promotes what is ‘best for the world’ (MM, 6: 474) by acting as a sensible intermediary for the idea of a ‘cosmopolitan moral community’ (Rel, 6: 200). By representing the idea of a cosmopolitan community, illusions of social grace can promote affective states that indirectly promote the cosmopolitan end.

At the end of his treatise on religion, Kant begins his discussion of the ‘means of grace’ by calling them ‘delusions’ (Rel, 6: 192). The means of grace are certain ritual practices within the church that apparently bring about or replace our moral service to God (the disposition of obedience). They are delusions insofar as they are often misunderstood as the actual means by which ‘we can bring about an effect which is a mystery to us, namely the influence of God upon morality’ (Rel, 6: 194) and thus seek to replace the service of God, which is invisible (non-sensuous), with some sensuous practice. However, Kant maintains that human beings need visible representations of the invisible, ‘indeed what is more, it must be accompanied by the visible for the sake of praxis (des Praktischen) and, though intellectual, made as it were an object of intuition (according to a certain analogy)’ (Rel, 6: 192). Kant then points out that our actual service to God, when ‘brought back to its spirit and true meaning’ consists in four duties and four ‘formalities’ that have been ‘appointed to correspond to them’ (ibid.). These formalities have been found to be ‘good sensible intermediaries that serve as schemata for the duties’ (Rel, 6: 193).

Collectively, these formalities promote the moral good by awakening and maintaining our attention on our obligated service to God. Kant seems not to be talking about single instances of ritualistic practice but establishing a system of repeatable and public formalities that can stabilize a union into an ethical body. In order to maintain the fellowship we need to create public and repeatable formalities that unite persons into a whole. Kant’s use of ‘ethical body’ to describe this unification might suggest that we have gone beyond ritual formalities to something more substantial. This is suggested by the next passage where we learn that the ritual expands our ‘cast of mind’. Yet the expansive feeling that is a result of the rituals is still an illusion. This is true for two reasons. First, Kant insists that if we represent communion or any other ritual as actually effective means of grace then we are deceived. The ritual must be understood as something like an illusion that is intended to produce helpful moral feelings. Second, the feeling is grounded not on the moral law, or even awareness of human dignity, but on the participation in and expectation from a community. Nonetheless, the expansive feeling gives way to the idea of cosmopolitan community and ‘enlivens’ the community to a ‘disposition of brotherly love’. The ritual, by acting as a sensible intermediary, gives us the ability to represent the idea of a cosmopolitan community. The ritual of communion, and other rituals like it, ‘expands people’s narrow, selfish and intolerant cast of mind … to the idea of a cosmopolitan moral community, and it is a good means of enlivening a community to the moral disposition ²⁸ of brotherly love which it represents’ (Rel, 6: 199–200).

This is what is meant by social virtues promoting indirectly ‘what is best for the world’ (MM, 6: 474). It seems that, because of Kant’s use of ‘citizen of the world’ as the motivation for the cultivation of reciprocity, we can reasonably conclude that what Kant means by ‘what is best for the world’ is the creation of the cosmopolitan whole. What Kant suggests here is that the creation of a widely loved virtue, by joining graces with virtue, helps us, through moral illusion, to represent the idea of a cosmopolitan moral community. By helping us to represent this idea through rituals of social grace and courtesy, the duty to make virtue widely loved cultivates feelings of reciprocity toward other human beings that indirectly promotes the union of people in an ever-widening ethical community. In other words, the illusion of virtue represents the idea of a cosmopolitan ethical community to us, which gives us expansive feelings of reciprocity and brotherly love, which in turn promotes the cosmopolitan end. Furthermore, as the social rituals stabilize so do the feelings of reciprocity. Singular feelings of reciprocity galvanize through social formalities into persons who are ‘in their disposition, citizens of the world’.

Therefore, social graces promote the cosmopolitan end by representing the ethical community and so enliven feelings of reciprocity.

4. Conclusion

My aim in this article was to explore the possibility of a duty to join the graces with virtue in Kant’s ethics. I took as the main evidence for the existence of such a duty an unduly neglected passage appended to the Tugendlehre. This passage, I claimed, argues for a duty to make virtue widely loved. This means we have a duty to associate the graces with virtue to create a ‘beautiful illusion of virtue’ (MM, 6: 473). In order to make sense of this I divided my work into three sections which dealt with 1) the ‘type’ of duty the duty to make virtue widely loved is, 2) the ‘content’ of the duty itself and 3) the ‘aim’ of the duty toward a cosmopolitan end. I argued that the duty to make virtue widely loved is a unique type of duty, a duty to humanity which spans both duties to others and duties to ourselves and explains its unique architectonic position. Furthermore, I argued that the content of the duty is the first-order duty both to act in a way that joins grace with virtue and to promote social grace which adheres to the moral law. By doing both these things we bring the expectations of social grace into formal agreement with what morality demands of us. Lastly, I argued that the duty to make virtue widely loved promotes what is best for the world by becoming a ‘sensible intermediary’ for the idea of a cosmopolitan community and so contributes to the cultivation of the cosmopolitan disposition.

The idea, mentioned at the beginning of this article, that Kant’s representation of duty is intentionally severe and opposed to the graces should therefore appear obviously false. Not only are the graces compatible with Kant’s ethics, it is part of our duty to bring together the idea of duty with the social graces in order to make virtue widely loved. It seems that Kant can whole-heartedly agree with Schiller’s rejection of a ‘monkish’ morality and that Kantian morality does not scare away the graces. ²⁹