Bas Tönissen

This paper investigates the development of Kant’s concept of ‘heart’ (Herz). Though it has been largely overlooked, ‘heart’ is an important term for Kant, referring to the power of the faculty of desire to produce desires based on feelings. In his Anthropology lectures, the heart belongs entirely to an agent’s Sinnesart (‘way-of-sensing’). In Religion Kant reintroduces it to connect the Sinnesart and the intelligible Denkungsart (‘way-of-thinking’). Whether we freely choose a good or evil heart partly determines how our feelings cause desires, letting Kant say what his mature theory of freedom requires: that we are responsible for our own motivations.

Kant is frequently read as saying that all self-love is bad, and the virtuous agent is one who suppresses self-love as much as possible. This paper argues that this is mistaken and that the right kind of self-love – what Kant calls rational self-love – plays an important role in a successful moral life. It shows how Kant provides a detailed taxonomy of different kinds of self-love. He contrasts the (practical) incentive of self-love with the (pathological) feeling of it, self-love of benevolence with self-love of delight, and self-absorbed/selfish with rational/moral varieties of each. The paper then argues that, while the Critique of Practical Reason only identifies a self-absorbed variety of self-love of delight, self-conceit, it gains a rational counterpart in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason: “self-contentment”. This is a positive self-love of delight uniquely felt by the morally good person. It is suggested that this shift reflects Kant’s increasing appreciation of the affective dimension of the virtuous life: for imperfect human beings the moral law must not only be worth obeying, but worth loving. Thus, while for morally bad agents self-love and morality inevitably conflict, good agents can and should love themselves.