Morality is its own Reward

Traditionally, Kantian ethics has been thought hostile to agents’ well-being. Recent commentators have rightly called this thought into question, but they do not push their challenge far enough. For they assume, in line with the tradition, that happiness is all there is to well-being – an assumption...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Kantian review 2016-11, Vol.21 (3), p.343-365
Main Author: Elizondo, E. Sonny
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ethics
Happiness
Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)
Morality
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Summary:Traditionally, Kantian ethics has been thought hostile to agents’ well-being. Recent commentators have rightly called this thought into question, but they do not push their challenge far enough. For they assume, in line with the tradition, that happiness is all there is to well-being – an assumption which, combined with Kant’s rationalism about morality and empiricism about happiness, implies that morality and well-being are at best extrinsically related. Drawing on Kant’s underappreciated discussion of self-contentment, an intellectual analogue of happiness, I reconstruct an alternative account of morality’s relation to well-being. Morality is intrinsically related to well-being – and so is its own reward – not because it makes us happy but because it makes us self-contented.
ISSN:1369-4154
2044-2394
DOI:10.1017/S1369415416000236