Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Penultimate Draft
Please cite final version: Mind 123 (492):1246-1249 (2014)
Roberts Sterns new book offers an original and elegant retelling of the story of the
development of theories of moral obligation from Kant though Kierkegaard. Sterns
account is pitched against what he calls the standard story. According to the
standard story, Kants importance in the history of ethics comes from his
recognition of the fact that autonomy is incompatible with moral realism, and his
consequent attempt to reground morality in the self-legislating moral subject.
Kants most notable successors (Hegel and Kierkegaard) followed him in rejecting
realist accounts of value, but came to think that his alternative to moral realism
suffered from the defect of emptiness, a problem they attempted to solve in different
ways: either by recourse to some kind of normative social theory or by emphasizing
the importance of subjective choice or inscrutable divine commands.
Stern is not out to deny, however, that autonomy plays a crucial role in Kantian
ethicshe wants to show that its role has been misunderstood. Kantian autonomy,
he argues, is not intended as an alternative to realism; it is not a new account of why
certain actions are good or right. Rather, it has the more restricted function of
explaining why what is good and right has an obligatory or binding character. It was
meant to displace certain intermediate forms of divine command theory, which
offered an intuitive account of why we are obligated (by God) to do what was right
(independently of Gods command). Once these issues are clearly distinguished, it
can be seen that Kants own account of obligation has a similar two-tier character:
he is a realist regarding the content of our moral reasons, but appeals to autonomy
only to explain the obligatory form that moral considerations take in human life.
The rest of the book attempts to show that this insight into Kants ethics offers us a
new way to think about post-Kantian ethics. Rather than viewing Hegel and
Kierkegaard as attempting to solve the problem of emptiness, a problem which is
not really there on Sterns view, they can be seen to represent alternative accounts
of a more restricted problem: that of the source of the obligatoriness of morality.
Stern arranges these three figures in a tight dialectical circle. He argues that Kant is
driven from the inadequacy of divine command accounts of obligation to his theory
of autonomy as self-legislation; Hegel (following Schiller) finds this solution too
dualistic, so moves to a social command account; Kierkegaard finds that Hegels
solution fails to make morality rigorous enough, so moves back to a divine
command account. In his concluding chapter, Stern argues that the merits and
defects of each position are so balanced as to leave one in a kind of equipoise
between the three options.
No one who is familiar with Sterns previous work will be surprised to find that the
book is such a pleasure to read. Stern is crystal clear about what he is arguing and
what his evidence is, he is very generous to alternative interpretations, and he
always has something new and interesting to say. One might worry, though, that the
elegant structure of his argument requires simplifying the issues at stake here.
These shifts in the very statement of the problem suggest that deeper philosophic
differences are being minimized. Stern is certainly aware that there are
interpretations of Hegel in which notions of obligation have no central placehe
himself defended such an interpretation in an earlier essay on Hegel. But here, he
rejects this kind of approach as simplistic, rightly pointing out that Hegel continues
to speak of duty (Pflicht) throughout the Philosophy of Right. But, as Stern surely
knows, Hegels notion of duty is not equivalent to Kants notion of obligation, for
Hegel explicitly denies that duty is rightly understood as having the form of an ought
(Sollen) or a demand (Forderung). This at least suggests that Hegel is not offering an
alternative answer to the question of why moral actions must appear as
commanded or necessitatedhe is rejecting the claim that duties must have this
form. Stern might have good reasons not to read Hegels criticisms of the moral
standpoint this way, as dissolving the problem of obligation, but it is not clear how
Sterns own narrative can be made to square with this aspect of Hegels teaching.
Understanding Moral Obligation is the first major attempt to use the realist
interpretation of Kant to re-narrate post-Kantian developments in ethics. It tries to
show that Hegel and Kierkegaard can be read as making internal criticisms of Kants
theory of obligation, criticisms that accept his way of posing the problem and do not
presuppose any dubious constructivist interpretation of his project. The resulting
picture of the deadlock between these rival theories of obligation is provocative and
original; it will certainly serve as a model for how historical research can be used to
contribute to contemporary debates.
Mark Alznauer
Northwestern University