Problems with Religion and Politics 373The essay has three parts. In the first Kant deals with the relation of moral
theory to moral practice. It was written to answer "some exceptions" taken
by Garve, who was more conservative than Kant. The second part discusses
the relation of theory and practice in constitutional law and was ostensibly
directed against Hobbes. The final part discusses theory and practice in
international law. Kant develops what he calls a "cosmopolitan" view, di¬
rected against Mendelssohn. This division expresses three perspectives that
a person can take on the world: the perspective of (1) a private citizen and
man of business, (2) a man in a state, and (3) a man in the world.
Garve had argued that Kant's distinction between acting from duty and
acting in accordance with duty, simply could not be maintained. Garve's
first objection was that for us to act morally, according to Kant, we must give
up our desire to be happy; but this is contrary to nature. Kant's answer: I
never demanded any such thing, and if I had, I would have asked for the
impossible. Garve's second objection was that we can never really know
whether we acted merely from duty or from selfish reasons. Since the dis¬
tinction is of fundamental importance for Kantian morality, this was a
serious criticism. Kant answered:
I gladly admit that no man can ever be conscious with certainty of having performed
his duty quite unselfishly, for this is a matter of internal experience, and this con¬
sciousness of his state of mind would require one to have a consistently clear view of
all the subsidiary notions and considerations which imagination, habit, and inclination
attach to the concept of duty. We can never demand such a view...
This was never demanded, according to Kant. He argued that his distinc¬
tion made sense if it was understood as an injunction to act in a certain way,
saying
that man ought to perform his duty quite unselfishly, and that his desire for happiness
must be completely divorced from the concept of duty in order to preserve its purity -
this he knows with utmost clarity ... to make a maxim of favoring. .. motives [at odds
with duty], on the pretext that human nature does not allow this kind of purity ... is
the death of all moral philosophy.^176
The distinction has to do with a person's Gesinnung, with his honesty of soul,
not with empirical psychology. Though our striving to do the right thing
for the right reason is not independent of psychological questions, it is also
not simply reducible to them.
Garve's third objection was related to the second. He claimed that in
practice we never know which of the many motives we usually have made us
do what we did. Duty is no better guide to action than any other motive.