202 Kant: A Biography
Kant now begins to emphasize the dependence of moral feeling on a log¬
ically prior and independent rational principle. Thus he claims:
The moral feeling is not an original feeling. It is based on a necessary internal law that
makes us view and feel ourselves from an external point of view. We feel ourselves in
general, or in the personality of reason, as it were, and we view our individuality as
an accidental subject, or as the accidents of the universal.^45
The conditions without which the approval of an action cannot be universal (can¬
not stand under a universal principle of reason) are moral.... The approval of an ac¬
tion cannot be universal, if it does not contain grounds for approval that are without
any relation to the sensible motives of the actor.
Accordingly,
The first investigation is: What are the principia prima diiudkationis moralis.. ., i.e.
which are the highest maxims of morality and which is their highest law?
- What is their rule of application ... to an objection of diiudication (sympathy of
others and an impartial spectator)? 3. What transforms moral conditions into motiva,
i.e. on what is their vis movens and thus their application to the subject based? The
latter are first the motivum that is essentially connected with morality, namely the wor¬
thiness to be happy.^46
These passages reveal Kant's continuing debt to Hume's account of moral
approval in terms of "the particular structure and fabric of the mind" of
a judicious spectator, and they contain also the beginnings of Kant's ac¬
count of morality in terms of generalized maxims and pure reason. Indeed,
the feeling of "ourselves in general," or the feeling "the personality of rea¬
son," has definite similarities to his later account of the "divine man within
us." It is as if the external and essentially "Humean" spectator has become
internalized and idealized. Hume thought he could account for moral judg¬
ment in terms of a "pleasing sentiment of approbation" by an unbiased and
disinterested spectator. Kant develops the idea of a completely rational ob¬
server of himself, or perhaps better, of an agent split in two, namely, a non-
rational actor and a rational observer of these actions.^47 Hutcheson and
Hume believed (and the early Kant suggested) that morality was based in
the final analysis on a moral sense. Kant sharply differentiates between
moral judgments that are purely rational and theoretical, that is, without
application, and the application of such principles, which presupposes
feeling. He explicitly says, "one must consider morality purely without any
motiva sensualis.'HS He also pointed out that "our system is the doctrine
of freedom subordinated to the essential laws of the pure will" and claims
that this is the agreement of all actions with one's personal worth.^49 It is