Authentic moral commitment — 
Kant's phenomenology of respect 
Paul Crowther 
This paper addresses Kant's complex arguments about the main kind of moral feeling. In Part I, I shall outline the structure of Kant's arguments 
concerning respect as they are presented in Book One, Chapter III of the 
second Critique. In Part II, I shall go on to criticise the claims to a priori status 
which Kant makes for respect; and in Part III will disentangle his major 
insights concerning it from this surrounding narrative of transcendental idealist 
epistemology. Finally, In Part IV, I shall develop these insights and thence 
restate the theory of respect in a way that is both consistent with Kant's ethical 
theory as a whole, and of more general significance. 
Part I 
Kant's general pattern of argument in Chapter III (Book One) of the second 
Critique is a relatively straightforward one. After his introductory comments, 
he proceeds to outline the negative and positive aspects of respect in turn, and 
then repeats this sequence some four or five times - with occasional detours 
wherein respect's broader social and theological significance is considered. 
What makes Kant's argument so difficult to grasp, however, is the fact that in 
each of his repetitions he tends to introduce new emphases and new points of 
detail - in a way which sometimes conflicts with his position as previously 
outlined. Rather than trace this extended development in detail, I will attempt 
to condense Kant's exposition and focus on the logical progression of his 
arguments. 
First, Kant holds that whilst a finite rational being cannot hope to explain why 
the moral law is able to determine the will, it is nevertheless possible to 
describe its effects. In order to show how the incentive for morality is 
provided, then, Kant proposes to carefully describe the effect of the moral 
law's determination of the will upon the faculty of desire. In essence, this 
effect is negative. As Kant puts it 
»... all inclination and every sensuous impulse is based on feeling, and the 
negative effect on feeling (through the check on the inclinations) is itself 
feeling. Consequently, we can see a priori that the moral law as a ground of 
This is a revised version of a paper presented to Mr Alan Montefiore's senior Kant Seminar at 
Balliot College, Oxford\ on May 25th 1988. I am indebted to the participants for their comments, 
and, in particular, to Mr Montefiore, Professor Onora O'Neill, and Mr Andrew Harrison. 
44 Paul Crowther 
determination of the will, by thwarting all our inclinations, must produce a 
feeling which can be called pain. 
On these terms, then, to make a moral decision involves the restraining of 
contrary impulses. Since this restraint involves a modification of feeling it 
»must« itself be experienced as a feeling - of a negative sort. Kant then offers 
us a complex analysis of this affective state. On the one hand it temporarily 
»checks« inclinations to »self-love« or »selfishness«. The reason why this 
checking is not total is that these sorts of inclinations are natural and active in 
us, and can be enjoyed with impunity to the degree that they do not lead us to 
neglect our moral duties. On the other hand, the will's determination by the 
moral law altogether strikes down or »humiliates« inclinations towards »self-
-conceit«. Now Kant gives - without remarking upon it - two rather different 
accounts of what constitutes »self-conceit«. His first full account occurs well 
on into Chapter III as follows. We are told that the propensity to 
»... make the subjective determining ground's of one's choice into an objective 
determination of the will in general can be called self-love; when it makes 
itself legislative and an unconditional practical principle, it can be called self-
-conceit.«? 
Hence, when we act in a spontaneous way from motives founded on purely 
personal interest we exemplify self-love; but if we make this sort of motivation 
into a supreme principle of conduct i.e. adopt some kind of egoist sense of self 
or world-view, then we exemplify self-conceit. It is this self-conceit which the 
moral law totally »humiliates«. (The reason for this humiliation is not fully 
spelt out by Kant, and I shall return to it at the end of this section.) Now the 
second interpretation of self-conceit is most fully stated even further on in 
Chapter III. It occurs in the context of one of Kant's detours into the broader 
social signification of respect. He remarks as follows. 
.»... to a humble plain man in whom I perceive righteousness, my mind bows 
whether f choose or not ... Why? His example holds before me a law which 
strikes down my self-conceit when I compare my own conduct with it; that it is 
a law which can be obeyed, and consequently is one that can actually be put 
into practice, is proved before my eyes by the act. <•? 
Kant's point, then, is that exemplars of moral rectitude and (one presumes) 
one's own awareness of the exacting standards set by the moral law, humiliate 
self-conceit in the sense of shattering our moral complacency. They illuminate 
just how far in practice we fall short of such standards. 
Given, therefore, this now complete outline of the negative dimension of 
respect - in terms of the checking of selfish inclination, the humiliation of 
1. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, (Translated by A. W. Beck), University Press of Chicago, 
Chicago 1949, p. 182. 
2 . Ibid, p. 184. 
3 . Ibid, p. 181. 
A u then tic moral commitment 45 
egoism and the shattering of moral complacency, we are now in a position to 
consider the positive aspects of the feeling. These are first introduced by Kant 
in the following passage. 
»Since /the moral/ law ... is in itself positive, being the form of an intellectual 
causality, i.e. the form of freedom, it is at the same time an object of respect, 
since, in conflict with its subjective antagonists (our inclinations), it weakens 
self-conceit... /hence/ it is an object of the greatest respect and thus of a 
positive feeling which is not of empirical origin. «* 
This awkwardly constructed passage is entirely typical of Kant's general style 
of expounding the positive dimension of respect. It suggests that there are two 
somewhat different aspects to this dimension - one based on the moral law's 
positive status as the exemplar of free rational agency; and other based on its 
causal efficacy in the humiliation of self conceit. That this apparent twofold 
aspect is not simply a function of Kant's awkwardness of presentation is 
demonstrated by the fact that at other points in Chapter III he discusses the 
two elements completely independently of one another. I shall now consider 
them in turn, beginning with the more difficult notion of the moral law's 
causal efficacy. The clearest exposition of this is to be found in the following 
passage. 
»Since the idea of the moral Jaw deprives self-love of its influence and self 
conceit of its delusion, it lessens the obstacle to pure practical reason and 
produces the idea of the superiority of its objective law to the impulses of 
sensibility; it increases the weight of the moral law by removing, in the 
judgement of reason, the counterweight to the moral law which bears on a will 
affected by the sensibility. <<? 
Kant's point here, I would suggest, is that by checking selfishness and 
humiliating self-conceit, the moral law produces a negative feeling which itself 
helps remove the obstacles to morality's determination of the will. This is 
because (one presumes) the felt checking and humiliation of contrary impulses 
will make us less susceptible to them in the future. Now this felt removal is 
subjectively experienced as a kind of increase of being for the moral law. The 
sheer impact of its negative effect on feeling enhances our sense of its efficient 
power and authority, and thus gives rise to a more positive kind of feeling. 
Now (as noted earlier) there is a further aspect to this positive dimension. 
Kant's clearest statement of it is as follows. 
»As submission to a law, i.e. as a command (which constrains the sensuously 
affected subject, it /i.e. respect/ contains, therefore, no pleasure but rather 
displeasure proportionate to this constraint. On the other hand, since this 
constraint is exercised only through the legislation of one's own reason, it also 
4 . Ibid, p. 183. 
5 . Ibid., p. 188. 
46 Paul Crowther 
contains something elevating, and the subjective effect on feeling can be called 
self-approbation with reference to pure practical reason.«? 
In this case, then, the impact of the negative feeling brings home to us the fact 
that it does not arise through the impositions of some alien power, but is rather 
effected by the legislative power of our own reason. Our sense of possessing 
free rational agency, in other words, is enhanced and becomes a positive 
feeling through a kind of resonation from the moral law's negative effects 
upon inclination. 
Let me now draw the main threads of Kant's argument together. When the 
moral law determines the will, it inhibits contrary impulses - namely our 
inclinations towards selfishness, egoism, and moral complacency. In so doing, it 
necessarily produces a negative feeling. Insofar, however, as this negative 
feeling also enhances both our sense of the moral law's causal efficacy and its 
origins in our own rational being, it must be accompanied by a positive feeling 
of elevation. On these terms, in other words, the positive dimension is causally 
dependent on the negative one. It is this whole complex sequence of affects 
which constitute the feeling of respect. 
Given this account, then, Kant is able to make two major claims. First, that 
respect is the authentic incentive to morality. This is because through it, the 
moral law 
»... has an influence on the sensibility of the subject and effects a feeling 
which promotes the influence of the la w upon the will. <•? 
Kant's second claim is that this authentic incentive to morality is the moral law 
»itself« 
»... so far as it lets us perceive the sublimity of our own supersensuous 
existence and subjectively effects respect in men who are /otherwise only/ 
conscious of their sensuous existence.«? 
On these terms, then, respect, not only provides an incentive which assists the 
moral law's capacity to determine the will, but also enables it to amplify into 
metaphysical awareness of our ultimate vocation - to be free rational 
legislators in a supersensible order of existence. 
With this account of Kant's major points of argument concerning respect 
before us, we can now subject them to more critical scrutiny. 
Part II 
Let me first address the elements involved in the negative dimension of 
respect. The most important of these is Kant's claim that the moral law's 
determination of the will entails the checking of contrary selfish impulses. This 
6. Ibid., p. 183. 
7 . Ibid., p. 194. 
8 . Ibid., p. 188. 
A u then tic moral commitment 47 
is a valid claim. It raises, however, a crucial problem - namely that of whether 
our inclinations must always be selfish and in conflict with the law. If, in 
principle, they need not be, then Kant has no right to assert that the moral 
law's determination of the will necessarily issues in a negative feeling i.e. he 
cannot claim a priori status for respect. The most obvious examples which 
might be cited against Kant, here, are of course, inclinations to love or 
sympathy. Admittedly, if these are the sole motives for an action, then that 
action will not count as a moral one. But we must, nevertheless, surely allow 
that the existence of such inclinations are counterbalances to selfishness, and 
that their presence will, therefore, indirectly assist the moral law's 
determination of the will. Now Kant suggests that it is a »risky« business to 
even allow non-moral motives to co-operate with the moral law. At best their 
presence makes it difficult to know whether our motive is genuinely a moral 
one; at worst they surreptitiously displace moral motivation. However, even if 
we admit these risks, and even if we concede that empirically speaking it may 
never be possible to discern our true motives, it is nevertheless in principle 
possible that on some occasions at least the moral law may determine the will 
in a context where selfish inclinations have been balanced out by 
other-regarding ones. In such a context, therefore, the moral law's 
determination of the will need not necessarily involve a felt checking of selfish 
inclinations. Now there is another, rather more complex argument with rather 
more interesting ramifications which leads to a similar conclusion. It centres on 
the distinction which Kant makes between »acting according to duty« 
(»legality«) and »acting from duty« (»morality«). 
»The former, (legality), is possible even if inclinations alone are the 
determining grounds of the will, but the latter, morality or moral worth can be 
conceded only where the action occurs from duty, i.e. merely for the sake of 
the law.*? 
Now the way Kant goes on to develop these remarks makes it clear that the 
»inclinations« which he has in mind in this passage are love and the desire for 
happiness. Let us suppose, however, that a person honours an obligation purely 
on the basis of motives of this sensuous sort. Now it is crucial to note that the 
very fact that the act is in »accord« with duty entails that it is one over which 
morality has proper jurisdiction i.e. is one which demands a moral motive 
irrespective of whatever else one might happen to feel. (In the strict terms of 
Kant's general ethical theory »can accord with duty« entails »ought to accord 
with duty«.) If, however, the act is carried out solely on the basis of sensuous 
motives, then the agent is infringing the moral law by allowing pathological 
elements to usurp its rightful function. Kant would have expressed the relation 
of such acts to duty in a more accurate way if he has described them as having 
pseudo-accord or pseudo-legality. Now the reason why Kant highlights these 
9 . Ibid, p. 185. 
48 Paul Crowther 
sorts of sensuously motivated acts and is then so lax in applying the strictures 
of his broader ethical position to them, is bound up with a strategy directed 
towards rival moral sense or hedonist theories of moral feeling. Rather than 
just dismiss such widely accepted alternative theories to his own, Kant prefers 
to assimilate and neutralise them under the rubric of »mere legality«. 
Unfortunately this strategy not only leads him into the above inconsistency, it 
also blurs his recognition of what is really at stake in the distinction between 
acting according to, and acting from duty. This blurred recognition just above 
focuses in the following passage. 
»... the moral law itself in its solemn majesty is exposed to /an/ endeavour to 
keep oneself from yielding respect to it. Can it be thought that there is any 
reason why we like to degrade it to the level of our familiar inclination and 
why we chose to make it the precept of our well-understood interest, other 
than the fact that we want to be free of the awesome respect?^0 
I would suggest that Kant is here implicitly offering an alternative formulation 
of the distinction between acting according to, and acting from duty. The 
former involves following the law (or at least striving to do so) on the basis of 
»familiar« (i.e. settled) inclination. Whereas the latter involves acting on the 
basis of an occurrent feeling of respect for the law. Now it is crucial to note 
that in Kantian terms both these patterns of action are genuinely moral, 
insofar as they both involve acting for the sake of the law rather than on the 
basis of purely sensuous motivation. The difference between them consists in 
the fact that the former emphasises the following of the law qua law. We have 
accustomed ourselves to its objective demands through training and practice, 
and have made them the governing factor in our lives. This I would suggest, 
can aptly be described as acting according to duty - a life of moral legality. 
Such legality is not simply an unthinking conformity to the law, produced by 
indoctrination. It is, rather a sober commitment to the law arising from mature 
reflection - as Kant puts it »the precept of our well-understood interest«. Now 
it might be objected that it is entirely inappropriate to describe this mode of 
commitment to the law as »moral legality« - given the connotation of mere 
correctness or conformity which the term »legality« invites. Yet it is precisely 
these connotations which Kant himself exploits in the foregoing passage in 
order to separate this settled inclination for morality from the more dramatic 
mode of moral existence that is founded on the occurrent feeling of respect. 
Indeed he presents what I am calling »moral legality« as an actual evasion of 
respect. I would argue, then, that Kant implicitly offers an alternative version 
of the distinction between acting according to duty, and acting from duty, on 
the basis of a contrast between moral legality founded on a settled inclination 
and moral decision founded on respect. I will develop the full ramifications of 
this important distinction in Part III. For the present, however, it suffices to 
10. See, ['or example, ibid., p. 183. 
A u then tic moral commitment 49 
point out that whilst this distinction is meant to stress the importance and 
significance of the occurent feeling of respect, it does so at the cost of further 
undermining respect's claim to a priori status. For the very fact that within the 
sphere of genuine moral action Kant himself distinguishes respect from 
another mode of motivation shows, of itself, that the moral law's 
determination of the will need not always involve respect. Respect's claim to a 
priori status, in other words, again proves problematic. 
Let me now address the second aspect of the negative dimension of respect, 
namely the »humiliation« of »self-conceit« - in the form egoistic world-views 
or moral complacency. Kant is slightly ambivalent as to the relation between 
this and both the other negative aspects of respect and the positive dimension. 
At some points, for example,11 he talks as though the humiliation of 
self-conceit, is the exclusive and direct effect of the moral law's determination 
of the will - upon which the positive dimension is causally dependent. This, 
however, cannot be the case, for as Kant understands it the notion of 
self-conceit - in either of its senses - is logically somewhat complex. For 
example, suppose we feel humiliated in comparing our former hedonistic 
lifestyle to our current acceptance of the moral law in its solemn majesty. This 
is not simply a case of recognising the law's authority. It implies rather, that 
we have thought the concept of morality through and are aware that it springs 
from a »real« self which is not a mere subject of mechanistic determination, 
but one grounded in free rational agency. The humiliation of egoism, is not in 
other words a simple negative effect of accepting the demands of the moral 
law. It embodies rather the kind of sophisticated appraisal and response in 
terms of which Kant characterises the positive dimension of respect. Similar 
considerations apply to self-conceit in the form of moral complacency. For to 
grasp the moral law as an exacting ultimate standard against which all claims 
to self-esteem must be measured, presupposes a full understanding of free 
rational agency and of the complex nature of the obstacles to it. On these 
terms, then, the humiliation of self-conceit is not a direct and simple negative 
effect of the moral law's determination of the will, upon which the positive 
dimension is causally dependent. Indeed, it actually presupposes the kind of 
complex appraisals in terms of which Kant characterises that dimension. 
One must also query, of course, the role of self-conceit's humiliation in 
relation to respect's claim to a priori status. For even if we accepted the claim 
that the moral law's determination of the will necessarily involved a felt 
negative response to the checking of our inclinations, this fact of itself does 
not entail (as Kant suggests) that we will also necessarily experience a 
humiliation of our egoes or of our tendencies to complacency. A person of 
insight and moral sensitivity might think through the broad implication of 
morality in relation to egoism and complacency and feel the requisite 
11. Ibid, pp. 254-255. 
50 Paul Crowther 
humiliation, but the simple moral soul might not. He or she, however, could 
still follow the moral law for its own sake - in a kind of pure and 
unquestioning way. I am suggesting, in other words, that the humiliation of 
self-conceit in either of its senses is contingent on the depth of moral 
awareness possessed by the individual moral agent. It cannot, therefore, be 
seen a priori as a necessary outcome of the moral law's determination of the 
will. 
Now in relation to the positive dimension of respect, something of its logical 
complexity has already been shown. In particular, we have seen that far from 
being causally dependent on the humiliation of self-conceit, the appraisals and 
responses which characterise the positive dimension, are actually presupposed 
by such humiliation. What we must now critically consider, then, is the 
relation which holds between the moral law's negative effect upon selfish 
impulses as such, and the positive aspects of respect. The first of these 
relations is that which arises when the negative effect upon the inclinations 
serves to exemplify and enhance our sense of the moral law's effectiveness - a 
sense which in turn leads us to experience a positive feeling of its authority. 
Now this sequence of appraisals and affective responses is certainly a possible 
one. For if we feel the effects of the moral law's determination of the will - as 
opposed, say, to simply doing our duty in a settled and legalistic way - then 
this might in turn lead us to respond affectively to the law's power, in a way 
that the legalistic approach might not. Again, however, whilst this sequence 
might take place, Kant has no grounds for claiming - as he does - that it is a 
necessary outcome of the will's determination by the moral law. It will, rather, 
be contingent upon the individual moral agent's particular level of 
susceptibility and insight. Similar considerations apply in relation to the other 
positive aspect of respect, namely our awareness of the moral law as the 
embodiment of our own free rational agency. An insight of this sort 
accompanied by a positive affective response, may well follow on from the 
moral law's felt constraint upon our inclinations. But there is no necessity in 
the sequence. Again, therefore, Kant's attempt to articulate respect in terms of 
a priori causality proves problematic. 
Kant's description of respect, then, presents it as a complex sequence of 
insights and negative and positive responses. The content of this sequence is 
illuminating and exemplifies something of Kant's depth of sensitivity as to the 
nuances of moral awareness in the finite rational being. The sequence as a 
whole, however, does not originate or hang together with the a priori necessity 
which Kant claims for it. Indeed, one might argue that it is his preoccupation 
with this latter possibility which prevents him from doing full justice to his 
phenomenological insights. In the next section of this paper, therefore, I will 
try to rescue Kant's phenomenology from the constraints imposed on it by his 
A u then tic moral commitment 51 
transcendental idealist epistemology, in order to prepare us for a more 
plausible restatement of his theory of respect in Part IV. 
Part III 
Let me begin by outlining what I take to be the three key insights in Kant's 
discussion. The first of these is the distinction between acting according to 
duty and acting from duty. Now as we saw in the last section, Kant is 
ambiguous about this distinction. His official exposition tends to articulate it in 
terms of an opposition between fulfilling a moral obligation on the basis of 
non-moral inclinations such as love or the desire for happiness, and fulfilling 
such an obligation on the basis of respect. However, I pointed out that in the 
former case the accord with the moral law is only an appearance of accord. In 
Kant's own strict terms, we actually have a conflict with duty in such cases. I 
went on to argue that the terms in which he should have drawn the distinction 
are actually visible in his text, albeit opaquely. These terms are: on the one 
hand acting according to duty in the sense of acting from a settled inclination 
or striving to fulfill the moral law, and, on the other hand, acting from duty in 
the sense of being motivated by an occurrent feeling of respect. What makes 
this way of drawing the distinction do fruitful is the crucial tension which it 
highlights, and the resolution of this tension which it points towards. To 
understand what is at issue here, we must recall that Chapter III of the second 
Critique is explicitly addressed to the search for an »incentive« to morality. 
Now in the distinction under consideration Kant seems to have picked out an 
»incentive« to morality - insofar as it involves a settled inclination to make 
the moral law the object of our »well-understood interest«. However, he not 
only distinguishes this from the feeling of respect, but even compares it 
unfavourably with that feeling. Yet earlier on (we will recall) he also 
explicitly identifies the »incentive« to morality with the feeling of respect. 
What explains that tension? I would suggest that it is due to the fact that Kant 
conflates two different approaches to respect. The first sees it as an a priori 
effect of the moral law's determination of the will, and is the direct outcome 
of his transcendental idealist epistemology being applied to the workings of the 
faculty of desire. However, as well as facing all the difficulties noted in Part II 
of this study, this approach fails to account for how an occurrent feeling -
respect, can be equated with an »inventive« - i.e. a settled disposition to 
pursue the law. The second approach, however, by-passes these difficulties 
insofar as it is orientated not towards questions of a priori causality, but rather 
towards showing the way in which a settled inclination to morality requires 
experience of the feeling of respect. It seeks to show (in terms of the above 
distinction) that acting in accordance with duty is empirically dependent on 
acting from duty. Now whilst this second approach is an indirect 
accompaniment to the main narrative concerning a priori causality, it is the 
52 Paul Crowther 
very core of all this is worthwhile in Kant's theory of respect. In order to 
develop it, however, we must now consider Kant's second major insight. It 
hinges on a psychological issue. At the heart of it is Kant's clear awareness 
that for a sensuously affected rational being, rational judgements carry more 
existential weight if they issue in some sort of affective response. In such a 
case our sensible nature, as it were, resonates with what we have recognised at 
the rational level. In this way, in other words, the rational judgement 
permeates our being in its entirety. Now bearing this in mind, let us consider 
the following passage from late on in the second Critique where Kant informs 
us that if moral concepts are to become »subjectively practical« they 
must not remain objective laws of morality which we merely admire and 
esteem in relation to mankind in general. Rather we must see the relation of 
them to man as an individual, for then the law appears in a form which indeed 
deserves of high respect though not as pleasing as if it belonged to the element 
to which he is naturally accustomed; on the contrary, it often compels him to 
leave this element, not without self-denial, and to give himself over to a higher 
element in which he can maintain himself only with effort...«?1 
As I read him here, Kant's point is that full moral existence demands not only 
the intellectual recognition of the moral l aw's objective validity, but also its 
internalisation at the level of concrete personal existence. Hence the 
difficulties and struggles it involves us in, and, in particular, the affective 
responses it generates, will be signs of the existential gravity with which we 
invest morality in our own lives. The coupling of moral decision with affective 
response, in other words, bespeaks a commitment of our whole being. We 
embrace morality at the level of both rational universality, and concrete 
sensuous particularity. 
I turn now to Kant's third major insight. For him, whilst respect is founded on 
logically complex negative and positive appraisals of our relation to the moral 
law, he presents it, nevertheless, as being experienced in terms of a 
phenomenologically singular feeling. At the level of logical analysis, in other 
words, we can separate its components, but at the level of concrete moral 
decision and action these are felt only as a single feeling of respect. Now one 
presumes that Kant's justification for this view is based on the fact that since 
the links between the negative and positive dimensions have an a priori 
foundation, it is only to be expected that we experience this linkage as a 
phenomenological continuum i.e. as a single feeling. Given, however, the 
objections which I have rehearsed against Kant's a priori narrative, his 
assertion of respect's phenomenologically singular status clearly requires some 
other justification. What this justification might look like will be a major 
consideration in Part IV of this paper. 
12. Ibid. pp. 254-255. 
A u then tic moral commitment 53 
To prepare the ground for Part IV, then, let me now summarise what I take to 
be Kant's three major insights. These are i) the distinction (within morality 
itself) between acting according to duty, and acting from duty; ii) Kant's 
realisation that occurent affective responses exemplify the seriousness of our 
commitment to morality; and iii) that such responses, whilst being logically 
complex, are experienced, nevertheless, as phenomenologically singular. Now I 
would suggest that, freed from the narrative of a priori causality, insights ii) 
and iii) can be used to clarify the distinction at issue in insight i) - and, in 
particular, to establish the fact that acting according to duty is dependent on 
acting from duty. By effecting this clarification, Kant's theory of respect will 
be restated in a form which is both consistent with his broader ethical theory, 
and with claim to more general significance. It is to this task I now turn. 
Part IV 
Let me begin by reinterpreting the negative aspect of respect. In Kantian 
terms, to obey the moral law requires that we suppress contrary inclinations 
founded on selfish considerations. Now we might learn to do this purely on the 
basis of instruction and indoctrination. A child, for example, originally learns 
to keep promises and refrain from telling lies in the context of threats and 
rewards; but then (hopefully, as it matures) simply does so for its own sake. 
Now an immature moral agent of this sort satisfied the minimum condition of 
kantian morality, insofar as he or she here follows the law without ulterior 
motive. It is an unthought through following - but a following all the same. 
Suppose, however, that on occasion fulfilling a moral obligation creates a 
situation that is personally inconvenient and inspires negative feelings. Now 
the very fact that we here do our duty despite the bad feelings suggests that we 
have gone beyond childlike following of the law, and have engaged with it at a 
level of more personal commitment. Acting according to duty may embody 
some commitment, but it is only when we fulfill our obligations in a context of 
felt cost, that we have an unmistakable criterion of commitment. 
Now the level of moral awareness in many people may not reach far beyond 
this. But there is clearly scope here for further cultivation. We might, for 
example, come to learn not only what the law demands of us, but also 
something of why its demands should be acknowledged as binding on us. This, 
of course, centres on the thinking through of the structure and significance of 
our rational autonomy. On the one hand we grasp that the very essence of 
morality is grounded on rational principles of reciprocity with other persons -
and thence exemplifies what is distinctive to humanity as a species. On the 
other hand, since such rational principles lead us to check our natural 
inclinations, we are also able to intuit our freedom - the fact that we are 
higher than nature and its framework of mechanistic causality. Now to think 
through morality in this way might be done in a purely intellectual manner. 
54 Paul Crowther 
But if we are moved by such thoughts about how extraordinary morality shows 
humanity to be, then this is a manifestation of the fact that morality is 
engaging us at a personal as well as objective level. 
I am arguing, then, that the negative and positive aspects of respect are criteria 
of the seriousness of our commitment to morality. Now the question arises as 
to why we should regard the conjunction of these aspects as anything more 
than a conjunction. Why, in other words, is it possible to feel them as 
phenomenologically unified i.e. as a feeling of respect rather than as two 
separate - albeit sometimes successive - responses? There are perhaps several 
reasons here. First, there is a kind is easy knock-on effect between respect's 
negative and positive dimensions - in that one seems to invite and reinforce 
the other. The element of felt constraint, for example, brings home the fact 
that morality is not simply what we want it to be, but at the same time qua felt 
effect also makes the fact and force of rational autonomy more vivid. We feel 
ourselves to be higher than nature. Indeed the rewards of this positive feeling 
will enable us to cope all the better with the phenomenon of felt constraint 
when next it arises. Now these connections do not have the kind of a priori 
strength which Kant assigns to them, but the ease of progression from one to 
another, and their mutually re-inforcing relation certainly explains how we are 
able to experience them as phenomenologically cohesive - as forming a 
complex but unified feeling. This justification of respect can also be 
supplemented in terms of an argument with much broader ramifications. 
Suppose, for example, that a person only ever experienced one of the 
ingredients of respect - say, the negative one. He or she would be committed 
to morality but would only experience it affectively in terms of thwarted or 
frustrated impulse. The accumulation of such responses, however, would, in 
the long run, tend either to actually turn morality into an object of aversion, 
or to generate a kind of fanatical asceticism, wherein even the legitimate 
claims of rational self-interest were denied. In either case, we would have a 
state of mind that was, in general terms, highly inimical to morality. Now 
suppose, on the other hand, that we only ever experienced the positive sort of 
affective response to morality. In such a case the danger is that the moral law 
would gradually become a mere object for marvelling at. Aesthetic motives 
might begin to displace moral ones, leading us to become, in time, mere 
admiring spectators of morality, rather than active practitioners of it. These 
cases suggest, then, that the experience of one but not the other element in the 
feeling of respect, leads at best to an unsettled and fragile moral existence, and 
at worst, to the long term decay of such existence. Similar considerations apply 
if, within one person's life, the negative and positive aspects of respect were 
always experienced in isolation from each other. The agent would become a 
kind of unhappy consciousness veering from aversion or ascetic intensity to 
detached contemplation, with real moral existence torn apart somewhere in 
A u then tic moral commitment 55 
between. Now the fact is, of course, that most people who respond affectively 
to morality also manage to lead fairly settled moral lives. This suggests, 
therefore, that in them, the negative and positive aspects are experienced 
together in a logically complex but phenomenologicaily cohesive feeling. One 
suppose that the reason why these elements tend to cohere, is because through 
their phenomenological conjunction we are able to achieve a balancing out and 
stabilisation of the different demands which morality makes on us as both 
rational and sensuously affected beings. Our need for moral stability, in other 
words, compels the conjunction. 
Given, then, these arguments concerning both respect's exemplification of our 
personal commitment to morality, and its phenomenological cohesiveness, we 
can now draw some conclusions which will clarify the relation between acting 
in accord with duty i.e. from settled inclination, and acting from duty, on the 
basis of the feeling of respect. Put simply, it amounts to this. If we did not - at 
least sometimes in our lives - act out of respect for the law, it is difficult to 
see how we could develop a settled inclination to make our decisions according 
to morality's demands. If we simply recognised its authority in terms of 
childlike obedience or purely intellectual judgement, then this would mean 
that morality had not taken root in the sphere of our personal existence. Any 
inclination for morality would be at best fragile. By not feeling the moral law's 
force at the affective level, in other words, we would be correspondingly more 
likely to deviate from it when its demands proved inconvenient. Difficulties 
would also arise (as we have seen) if our affective responses to the law were 
one sidedly negative or positive. Here our inclinations for morality would be 
rendered fragile, unsettled, and even placed under threat of long term decay. 
One might say, then, that a settled inclination to act in accordance with duty 
is, in an empirical sense, dependent on experiencing that balanced conjunction 
of rational judgement and negative and positive affective response, which is 
embodied in the feeling of respect. Respect also plays a second crucial role. 
For once a settled inclination for morality has been attained, it is constantly 
threatened by a kind of reification - by the possibility of decaying into a mere 
mindless striving for conformity. In such a state the sensuous element - the 
settled inclination itself - begins to dull our awareness of the reasons why the 
moral law demands, and is worthy of, our commitment in the first place. The 
exercise of pur rational autonomy is thence rigidified and begins to appear -
dare one say it - mechanical. The occurrence of the feeling of respect, 
however, is a felt renewal of our awareness of both the moral law's demands 
and origins. It re-presents morality as both a problem and solution to life, as 
well as the basis of a path through it. The immediate effects of such a feeling 
may be existentially uncomfortable. Indeed, as Kant so shrewdly relates, we 
may even wish to evade it. However, because it is a balanced response with a 
positive as well as a negative dimension, we can expect the feeling to restore 
and invigorate, as well as unsettle. 
56 Paul Crowther 
I am arguing, then, that to act according to duty is dependent on acting from 
duty in two senses. First, the feeling of respect facilitates a settled inclination 
for duty; and second, it prevents that inclination from degenerating into a 
blind quasi-mechanical striving for conformity to the moral law. Now this 
dependency is empirical rather than a priori, but this by no means diminishes 
its philosophical significance. For as a universal code of conduct, morality's 
»ought« implies »can« in something more than the strictly logical sense of 
presupposing free agency. Specifically, it implies that human beings can, as it 
were, be at home with morality,13 and make it a rule for life in the fullest 
sense. It must, in other words, be a source of existential fulfillment, as well as 
a law to be recognised and obeyed. Without this former possibility, we could 
still, indeed, be moral beings, but the moral law would appear so alien to our 
sensuous dimension, as to seem almost impossible to realise in any systematic 
way. The moral law's instantiation in finite rational being would, thereby, be 
rendered, in effect, self-defeating. Now Kant's theory of respect - once freed 
from the narrative of a priori causality - deals squarely with this problem. It 
shows how morality is able to make itself at home in finite rational being. 
Respect is a mode of existential self-fulfillment that is more complex and 
ambiguous than mere satisfaction or happiness. By constantly shaking up yet at 
the same time consolidating our commitment to morality, it is the basis of 
moral existence in the fullest sense for a finite being. One might say that, for 
Kant, the logic of the categorical imperative yields the essential skeletal 
structure of morality, but that it is the feeling of respect which gives it flesh.1* 
In conclusion, it is worth very briefly sketching out a rather broader sphere of 
application for Kant's theory of respect. For to act in the terms of any moral 
code, surely presupposes a capacity to restrict at least some selfish impulses on 
the basis of rational principles of conduct. It also presupposes, of course, that 
we have the freedom to do so. Now to act on the basis of such a discourse of 
restraint and rational autonomy, can be done in a settled and familiar way, and 
become a life of moral legality. However, at the heart of such existence is an 
economy of lost selfish gratification, and positive rational fulfillment. To 
experience this economy in terms of a complex but phenomenologically 
cohesive feeling, is to experience morality as having a sort of existential »bite«. 
It is to live morality in a balanced way, and to emphatically affirm both its 
13. In a sense Kant's underlying strategy in The Critique of Judgement is to establish how our 
aesthetic engagement with nature makes us »at home« in the world, in a way that is 
conducive to morality. For a fuller discussion of this see Chapter Three of my The Kantian 
Sublime: From Morality to art, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. 
14 . I have dealt with other aspects of this »fleshy« phenomenological significance of Kant's 
thought in Part II of »The Claims of Perfection : A Revisionary Defense of Kant's Theory 
of Dependent Beauty«, International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. X X V I , No. 1, March 
1986, pp. 61-74; and in »Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty: An Approach to 
Kant's Aesthetics«, Kant Studien. Vol. 76, No. 1 ,1985 , pp. 55-71. 
A u then tic moral commitment 57 
demands and its rational basis. Without such a feeling to focus the reality of 
our commitment, our inclination to accord with the demands of morality 
would be rendered fragile, or become rigidified and mechanical. In the most 
general terms, then, if our commitment to a moral code is to be renewed and 
revivified - if we wish to sustain an authentic moral commitment - as opposed 
to mere conformity, then we must be able to experience that code in terms of 
complete moral feeling. It is this generally valid claim and the structure of 
phenomenological insights which sustain it, that form the real core of Kant's 
theory of respect. Kant's theory, in other words, provides the basis of a model 
for distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic moral commitment as 
such.