In the Preface to the first edition of the Religion, Kant explains that while the foundation of morality abstracts from the presentation of ends altogether, it is still impossible for humans to act without conceiving of ends. Because human beings naturally desire happiness, morality leads to the presentation of the final regulative end as the highest good, which is perfect happiness proportionate to perfect virtue. With regard to this highest purpose, Kant writes in a footnote: ‘Now in this end human beings seek something that they can love, even though it [the end] is being proposed to them through reason alone.’ (R, 6:7.26–28fn.) What is this love that human beings seek in the highest good? And how should one understand the connection between love and the highest good anyway? I believe there is no simple answer to this question, and Kant does not spell out what he means by love in the above quotation. David Sussman thinks this love is close to ‘pathological love’, by which he means ‘a love that fully integrates our feelings, our imagination, and our attention around a particular object of concern’ (Sussman 2010, p. 143).
Respect is fundamental, but mere respect for the law will not account for our loving God or furthering the happiness of other human beings. By itself, respect can never make us happy.Without love, the path toward the highest good will not be open. But what love are we now talking about? In ‘The End of All Things’, Kant explains further that there is something loveable or loveworthy [liebenswürdig] about the Christian religion, which stems from Christianity’s ‘liberal way of thinking’ [die liberale Denkungsart] (8:338.23). Apparently, it is the freedom one feels in the choice of making the highest good one’s ultimate end that occasions love in this context. In ‘The End of All Things’, this love is ultimately connected to God’s benevolent disposition towards humanity. It seems that the ideas of God’s benevolence and kindness [Gütigkeit] are what make Christianity loveable (8:338.23–339.19; cf. C2, 5:131.10 –19). But can we interpret the love that human beings seek in the highest good as reducible to rational Christian love of God? Given the ambiguous nature of the highest good (see ch. 1.3), and given the results of my investigations of love in the five chapters of this study, this kind of reduction would be an oversimplification of Kant’s position. In self-love, we seek happiness and love from others; in sexual love, a moral union of two people to procreate and enjoy each other’s sexual attributes. In love of God, we strive to practice our duties to others gladly, with a benevolent disposition pleasing to God, which disposition at its ideal endpoint could also be called love for the law.
- In love of neighbour, we take delight in the humanity of others and aim to love them practically with active rational benevolence, adopting their ends as our own. In love in friendship, we strive to cultivate benevolence and delight in intimate, equal, and reciprocal human relationships while seeking to open up this love so that one day we might all be able to call each other friends as members of the human race.
- Love’s Ascent in Kant:
- The status of love as an object of rational enquiry was solidified by Plato. What is Kant’s conception of love of wisdom? Surely, if we are after a Kantian philosophy of love, the aspects of love and the ascent model must be understood in this context. But does Kant even speak of love of wisdom? And can we say that ‘philosophy’ itself is a kind of love, for Kant, if he does not use the word ‘Liebe’ in the immediate vicinity of ‘Philosophie’? Kant’s references to ‘philosophy’ in his writings are abundant, and a proper account of the various connotations would be a topic for another volume. However, the notion of love of wisdom comes up only once in the published works, and an analysis of this passage will be the final task of the present study. The passage appears in the second Critique, close to the beginning of the ‘Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason’. The issue is once again the highest good, and more precisely how to determine its idea practically. Here, Kant calls this determination the ‘doctrine of wisdom’ [Weisheitslehre], or the science of ‘philosophy’ in the ‘ancient sense’ (C2, 5:108.18–28).
- In general, we know from elsewhere that Kant understands philosophy as the system of rational cognition from concepts (see e. g. C1, A713/B741; A732/B760; A838/B866; C3, 5:171) and that philosophy divides into theoretical and practical philosophy, where theoretical philosophy concerns what is and practical philosophy what ought to be (e.g. C3, 5:171; C1, A840/B868; see also A850/B878). Kant also uses ‘transcendental philosophy’, ‘speculative philosophy’, and ‘philosophy of nature’ to refer to the theoretical approach, and ‘moral philosophy’ to refer to practical philosophy. In the first Critique he states: ‘Philosophy refers everything to [the goal of] wisdom. But it does so by the path of science’ (C1, A850/B878). Often when Kant speaks of wisdom or being wise, he connects it with the idea of God. We view the world as if it were the product of a wise author or supreme wisdom, organised purposively with regard to the highest good (see e. g. C1, A628/B656; A687/B715; A699/B727; A826/ B854; C2, 5:130–131; C3, 5:444). Sometimes wisdom is discussed as the union of benevolence and justice (C3, 5:444; see 8:257 ff.), and for humans, wisdom is an ideal (C1, A569/B597). In terms of these divisions, the main point that Kant seems to be making with regard to love of wisdom in the second Critique is that there are two different kinds of components in the doctrine of wisdom and the way it relates to the highest good: there is a theoretical or scientific aspect and a practical aspect.
- In the second Critique, wisdom is given a twofold definition explicitly in terms of the theoretical/practical distinction: ‘wisdom considered theoretically signifies cognition of the highest good, and practically the fitness of the will for the highest good’ (C2, 5:130.36–131.1; see also 8:256fn.; cf. 8:336.5–7). And at the very end of the conclusion of the second Critique (C2, 5:163.27–31). First, the ‘restrictive condition’ [einschränkende Bedingung] must refer to science: the doctrine of wisdom must be scientific.
- This, I think, is connected to how Kant uses the word ‘love’ in the context of ‘love for the law’. In these two cases (love for the law and love of wisdom), love seems to denote an ideal object of striving. The object is, at least to a certain extent, a product of our reason; it is in a sense ‘higher’ than us, something the completion of which we lack. This reminds one of how Eros is discussed in the Symposium. Kant’s love of wisdom seems to denote precisely this relation of lack, of pursuit, of strenuous ascent towards what we do not yet possess. It therefore seems that, in addition to the most paradigmatic cases of love, where the object of love is a person and the love relation is described directly in terms of the general division of love, there is another category of objects, where the object of love is a rational ideal that one desires and for which one strives. In comparison with animality, these ideals are at the other end of the spectrum of desire (cf. ch. 1.1). . If we think of Kant’s discussions of God as divine wisdom or as possessing supreme wisdom, we can venture one step further and say, in terms of the general division, that there is no wisdom without love of benevolence, which in religious terms is the ground of creation. In general, love of wisdom signifies the unity of theoretical cognition and practical cognition in the pursuit of the highest good.
- Figures
- Determining Grounds of the Will:
- The General Division of Self-Love:
- The Two-Directionality of Love of God:
- The Ascent Model of Love of God:
- Gratitude:
- Sympathy:
- Basic Divisions of Love of Neighbour:
