A Palingenesis and Its Consequences 147event in a human life. Maxims, at least "maxims" in the sense of the an¬
thropology lectures, are Lebensregeln, or rules to live by. Maxims are there¬
fore not to be understood as "free-floating, isolated decisions ... that stand
in no connection with an enduring moral agent with a determinate nature
and interest," as Henry Allison suggests as a possibility.^7 Maxims always
refer to enduring moral agents. Indeed, they make sense only if we assume
an agent. They are expressions of rational agency. If we truly knew the
maxims of a rational agent, we would also know a great deal about the moral
agent. Since the maxims are the very rules she lives by, the maxims would
tell us what kind of person she is. Nor would we have to observe every
action of the agent in order to determine her maxims. The patterns of her
behavior would be enough to tell us something about the rules she has
chosen to live by.
Maxims do not merely express what kind of a person one is; they con¬
stitute that person, in some sense. They constitute the person as character.
In other words, to have a certain set of maxims and to have character (or
to be a person) is one and the same thing. This is perhaps the most im¬
portant point of Kant's anthropological discussion of maxims. Maxims are
character-constituting principles. They make us who we are, and without
them we are, at least according to Kant, nobody. As he puts it, character
"is based on the rule of maxims"; to have a certain character means to have
certain maxims, and to follow these maxims. Indeed, it is only when our
"maxims are constant" that "we call them character." Perhaps it is still too
weak to say that maxims are character-building principles, for character
seems to be constituted by maxims. As free and rational beings, we can and
must adopt principles according to which we live, and it is for that reason
that character may "be defined also as the determination of the freedom
{Willkür) of human beings by lasting and firmly established maxims." In¬
sofar as character is indeed the characteristic mark of human beings as free
and rational beings, living by maxims makes us what we should be. It is for
this reason that Kant believes that the "mark of human beings considered
as freely acting beings is, strictly speaking, his character." It is for this rea¬
son that he identifies character with our "way of thinking" (Denkungsarf),
which is opposed to the "way of sensing" (Sinnesart). Putting it differently,
he says, "character is a certain subjective rule of the higher faculty of de¬
sire [i.e., will], ethics contains the objective rules of this faculty. Accord¬
ingly, character makes up what is characteristic of the highest faculty of
desire. Each will... has its subjective laws, which constitute, however, its
character."