However, now it appears that we have equivocated the notion of a 'good end'. In Korsgaard's view, the term 'goodness', as it is used here, refers to an end's feature of providing suffcient reasons for action (Korsgaard 1986, 194), but also of being "the object of every rational will" (ibid.). We can understand this as the claim that the ends set by rational beings provide 'public' or 'agent-neutral' reasons for action (see Korsgaard 2009, 191). That is, it is not merely the case that the end provides one particular rational being with reasons for action, but it is true in general that this end provides reasons for action to *any* rational being who has set it. An end's 'goodness', according to this notion, is its reasonsgiving relation to any rational being who has set the end. But of course, no account of moral concern can get off the ground with this notion of goodness alone. As Godfrey-Smith points out: "You can have a respect for my good sense without being motivated to help me" (Godfrey-Smith 2021). What we need is not merely an end's feature of providing reasons to any rational being *who has set it*, but *to any rational being, period*. *Your* end should provide *me* with reasons, no matter whether I have adopted it. But then, the reasons provided by your ends must be 'public' in a much stronger sense.

One could defend Korsgaard by saying that she meant all along that the reasons generated by the ends of rational beings are 'public' in the stronger sense, namely in the sense that they exert normative force even over rational beings who have not adopted the end. After all, she puts great emphasis on the claim that good ends are "the object of every rational will" (Korsgaard 1986, 194). However, this turns Korsgaard's point into an argument we already dismissed earlier, namely that a rational being can only act under the presumption that she deserves moral concern in the substantive sense. This is patently not the case, as examples of selfdepreciating people such as Maria von Herbert show (see Sect. 4.2 above).

Therefore, once again, we are left with two notions, one of which clusters with esteem and the other with concern. We may grant Korsgaard the claim that a rational being can only act on the presumption that her end provides reasons for any rational being who has set it, so that in a certain sense 'public' reasons must be in play. But when we go on to say that the goodness of our ends accounts for the requirement of substantive moral concern, we have taken a leap. We are now talking about ends that are 'good' in the sense of providing reasons even to beings who have not set them. Merely insisting that both are aspects of 'goodness' will not do mind the gap. Otherwise we are merely reiterating the Esteem-Concern Equivocation.

To conclude, interesting and illuminating as they are, neither Wood's nor Korsgaard's reading of the FH gives a compelling account of Kant's journey from agency to moral concern. In the attempt to employ these readings of the FH to provide a bridging story, we have merely run into the Esteem-Concern Equivocation put in different terms. So the arguments which these readings ascribe to Kant end up being fallacious. Although one could always press philosophical arguments further, I take it that these diffculties are serious enough for us to consider an alternative reading of how Kant arrives at his conception of our duties to others.

### 4.4 Obligatory Ends: How Kant Derives Duties to Others

The way forward is to dispense with the popular idea that the FH encapsulates, or is very intimately related to, Kant's account of moral concern. One reason for this is that, as I have just argued, if we want to read an argument for moral concern into the passage leading up to the FH, that argument will not be very compelling. Another reason is that *treating individuals a certain way*, and so *treating individuals with moral concern*, inevitably has to do with effecting change in the world. To tell a moral agent how to treat individuals is to tell her what things to create, what processes to initiate, what states of affairs to bring about, in relation to those individuals. In Kant's terms, we are dealing with the prescription of *ends to be produced* (G 4:437.25). But as Kant makes abundantly clear, humanity as an end in itself is not an end to be produced, but a selfstanding end (G 4:437.27). This should make us suspicious of any suggestions to the effect that Kant's account of moral concern derives from the notion of end-in-itselfhood.

However, there is yet another reason to disbelieve that Kant's account of moral concern is to be found in and around the FH: Kant provides a better account of moral concern elsewhere, in his doctrine of obligatory ends. The goal of the present section is to sketch Kant's argument for the requirement of moral concern. The last section will then be devoted to the question what the FH is there for, if not to provide a basis for moral concern.

When Kant introduces the notion of an obligatory end, he makes it clear that he is talking about *ends to be produced*: "An end is an object of free choice, the representation of which determines it to an action (*by which the object is brought about*)" (MM 6:384.33–34, emphasis removed and added). Kant then goes on to present arguments for two crucial claims: First, in general there must be an end that is also a duty. This is an end to be produced which we ought to adopt. Secondly, there are two obligatory ends in particular, namely one's own moral perfection and the happiness of others. These arguments jointly provide the basis for Kant's account of moral concern.

Kant's frst argument is presented in a brief section of the introduction to the *Doctrine of Virtue*. Apart from the characterisation of ends as objects of choice whose representation determines action, Kant begins by explaining the notion of an obligatory end in more detail. He emphasises that "having any end of action whatsoever is an act of *freedom*" through which a rational being determines *herself* (MM 6:385.03–04). What is important here is that nature does not set *all* ends for rational beings (though it does set the end of our own happiness, see Sect. 2.3 above). Considered purely as rational beings, we are capable of setting ends for ourselves freely. The laws that govern the free setting of ends are a rational being's practical principles, not the laws of nature. Now the idea is that some principles command ends categorically, not merely as means to further ends. And an *obligatory* end, or "end that is also a duty" (MM 6:382.06–07), is an end that is commanded categorically in this way.

Having explained the notion of an obligatory end, Kant goes on to argue that there *is* indeed such an end: "Since there are free actions there must also be ends to which, as their objects, these actions are directed" (MM 6:385.11–12). Taken by itself, this only establishes that every free action has *some* end, not that there is one and the same particular end that is prescribed for every free action.13 Kant however insists that "among these ends there must be some that are also (i.e., by their concept) duties" (MM 6:385.12–14). The reason for this is that autonomous action could not get off the ground without an obligatory end: "For were there no such ends, then all ends would hold for practical reason only as means to other ends; and since there can be no action without an end, a *categorical* imperative would be impossible" (MM 6:385.14–17).14 The argument, as I see it, consists of two major parts: The frst part is a view about free actions, namely that they exist, and that they are directed towards some end which is provided by practical reason, not by nature. The second part is a view about practical reason, namely that it determines action by means of principles which can either be hypothetical or categorical. Hypothetical imperatives have the form 'if X is your end, do Y' (see G 4:441.10–11), and hence practical reason can only use these principles to initiate action if some end (namely X) is already presupposed. Furthermore, since ends are often in turn means to further ends, hypothetical imperatives form chains or strings. These strings have to end somewhere if pure reason is to be practical; otherwise practical reason would merely be in the business of selecting means to presupposed ends. Now Kant's view, already established in the *Groundwork*, is that there is also a *Categorical* Imperative, which demands actions or maxims without reference to any presupposed

13 If we were to take the premiss that all free actions have an end and conclude from it that there is *one* end of all free action, we would have committed an illicit quantifer shift. Of course, we should resist a reading that ascribes a blatant fallacy to Kant.

14Here I diverge from an infuential reading in the literature, endorsed by Potter (Potter 1985) and Allison (Allison 1993). Potter and Allison both take Kant's argument to rest on the Categorical Imperative insofar as the Categorical Imperative expresses the moral law. They read Kant as arguing that the assumption that there are no obligatory ends leads us to the repugnant conclusion that there is no moral law, hence that there are no moral rules. By contrast, I read Kant as referring to the Categorical Imperative as the principle initiating transcendentally free action independently of nature. The Categorical Imperative is at the same time an expression of the moral law, but the emphasis here lies on freedom, not morality.

ends. Only thanks to this imperative is it possible for pure reason to initiate action at all. Hence, putting the two parts of the argument together, we get the conclusion that pure reason must supply at least one end of its own; otherwise it could not be practical. And if an end is provided by pure practical reason, that is an obligatory end. Therefore, there must be an obligatory end.

Kant concludes his section by emphasising again that the obligatory end is provided by reason alone, not nature. What matters for Kant's account of moral concern, however, is that he has set the stage for materially specifc moral injunctions about what rational beings ought to do. That includes what they ought to do *to* themselves and others. Hence, the stage is set for moral concern.

The second argument Kant offers is that one's own moral perfection and the happiness of others are the obligatory ends. This argument is admittedly somewhat obscure, and the presentation is lamentably brief. On the face of it, Kant simply *posits* that one's own perfection and the happiness of others are obligatory ends without any preceding argument (MM 6:385.31–32). He does not seem to expect the reader to have any objections or questions regarding this point. However, his remarks in the following three paragraphs in the introduction to the *Doctrine of Virtue* do provide some basis for his claim.

Kant's strategy is not to argue positively for the claim that these two ends are obligatory, but instead to argue merely that the two converse ends—one's own happiness and the perfection of others—cannot possibly be obligatory ends. One's own happiness does not qualify as an obligatory end because it is "an end that all human beings have (by virtue of the impulse of their nature)" (MM 6:386.01–02; see Sect. 2.5), and "what everyone unavoidably already wants by himself, does not belong under the concept of *duty*" (MM 6:386.03–05). In other words, an obligatory end cannot perfectly map onto what we want as natural beings, or else it would lack its character of prescription. The problem with the perfection of others, by contrast, is that "it is self-contradictory to require (make it my duty) that I ought to do something that no other than he himself can do" (MM 6:386.12–14). Kant's point is that perfection comes from setting moral ends and acting from duty, both of which we can only do for ourselves. It is therefore strictly impossible for us to promote the perfection of others. Though there are many small questions to ask about these arguments, we should focus on the big methodological issue: How is Kant's process of elimination supposed to work by which he determines the obligatory ends? How, in particular, did Kant arrive at the initial two candidates, perfection and happiness?

By and large, the consensus among Kant readers is that Kant derives the two candidates from his account of the highest good in the world (as Allison points out, Allison 1993, 18). The highest good in the world, Kant lays out in the second *Critique*, consists in complete virtue together with proportionate (complete) happiness (CPrR 5:110.31–111.05). Though it is not so clear in the *Doctrine of Virtue* that Kant is relying on this doctrine to derive the obligatory ends, he makes it quite explicit in the *Gemeinspruch*, published four years earlier:

the need for a fnal end assigned by pure reason and comprehending the whole of all ends under one principle (a world as the highest good and possible through our cooperation) is a need of an unselfsh will *extending* itself beyond observance of the moral law to production of an object (the highest good). (*Gemeinspruch* 8:279FN)

Kant's point here is directed against his fellow philosopher Garve, who had objected to the *Groundwork* that a will determined by a formal principle alone (in particular, a will that determines itself independently of all considerations of happiness) could never have an object, thus it would be indeterminate what a good will wills (Garve 1802; *Gemeinspruch* 8:278f.). In response, Kant explains that the good will 'extends' itself (*Gemeinspruch* 8:278FN) to include an intended product (though that product is not what gives the good will its moral worth). And Kant makes it clear that the way to fnd the intended product of a good will is to take the highest good in the world and leave out the bits that are unattainable through our actions (*Gemeinspruch* 8:279.19–22). This matches with Kant's process of elimination in the *Doctrine of Virtue*. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that Kant really does rely on his doctrine of the highest good in the world when arguing for the two initial candidates for obligatory ends.

At frst sight, Kant's reliance on the doctrine of the highest good in the world poses a problem. On the one hand, the doctrine of the highest good is in itself a fairly controversial part of Kant's system. Allison remarks that it is "somewhat disappointing" to learn that Kant relies on the doctrine of the highest good to establish the obligatory ends (Allison 1993, 18). The greater diffculty for present purposes is however that Kant's conception of the highest good, both in the person and in the world, relies on the idea of "happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality" (CPrR 5:110.33). This would suggest that Kant must exclude animals, who after all never morally *deserve* their happiness in virtue of embodying a good will.

To my mind, there are two acceptable ways of resolving this diffculty. The frst and stronger way has already been suggested in the literature: As Cholbi points out, Kant never claims that happiness is *not a good*, but rather that it is a good *conditioned* by morality (Cholbi 2014, 348). But happiness as a good is only so conditioned because it can corrupt the wills of human beings (ibid.). This is why Kant asserts that an impartial spectator could take no delight in seeing wicked people happy (G 4:393.19–22). But animals are crucially unlike wicked people. They cannot be morally corrupted by their happiness, since they are not moral agents in the frst place. Though the happiness of animals is of course never *deserved* through virtue, it is also never *undeserved* through vice. In this way, their happiness is a more innocuous good than the happiness of human beings. If the highest good in the world is the greatest possible presence of goods (conditioned and unconditioned), then we should consider the happiness of animals to form an important part of it.

Note that this reliance on the doctrine of the highest good does not represent an endorsement of teleology (see Trampota 2013, 141). Good actions are still good in virtue of springing from a good will, not in virtue of contributing to the highest good in the world. Kant here uses the notion of the highest good as a heuristic or flter, as it were, to determine *what* a good will would want. It would want what any rational being could endorse as a good, which is the highest good in the world. But Cholbi's crucial point is that any rational being could very well endorse as a good the happiness of beings that are morally incorruptible.

The second way to resolve the diffculty is to circumvent the doctrine of the highest good in the derivation of the obligatory ends altogether. We can do this if we focus on the *practical* role of happiness and perfection as ends of human beings. In Kant's view, happiness and moral perfection are the *only* two ends human beings can pursue at the end of the day. In general, setting ends is a task of practical reason according to Kant (MM 6:385.01–04). It can accomplish this task in either of two ways: frst, as pure practical reason, by supplying its own end; secondly, as instrumental practical reason, by choosing the means to the end nature has imposed on human beings, their own happiness. Practical reason implements these ends and means in action by means of practical principles, hypothetical or categorical. To repeat, practical principles interact in certain ways—hypothetical principles string together, so that each end is a means to a further end. Ultimately, human beings only ever act *either* for the sake of the end imposed upon them by nature, *or* for the sake of the end they set for themselves purely as rational beings. Insofar as human beings act from the ends imposed by nature, they aim for *happiness*. And insofar as they act from an end they set purely as rational beings, they aim for *moral perfection*. This argument then relies on Kant's background assumptions about human agency, but not about the highest good.

We can roughly summarise the proposed line of reasoning in the following argument:

#### **Argument for the two obligatory ends**

An obvious problem with this argument is that it cannot establish *that* our own perfection and the happiness of others are obligatory ends. It can only establish that they are the only remaining candidates. What is more, there is no guarantee that no further distinctions must be drawn, so that

15Note that the premiss here is not that human beings can act for the sake of happiness *tout court*, as opposed to *someone's* happiness in particular. We are inclined to promote *our own* happiness, and we can have a duty to promote *someone else's* happiness. The idea of acting for the sake of happiness *tout court* would be hard to accommodate in Kant's philosophy, and I thank Jens Timmermann for pointing this out. So the argument should be understood to begin from the premiss that human beings can only act for the sake of someone's happiness or someone's perfection, and to move towards the conclusion that only the happiness of others and our own moral perfection qualify as obligatory ends. As another side note, premiss (2) is a very strong claim. It implies, for instance, that human beings cannot intelligibly act for the ultimate sake of beauty, without that beauty being in turn a means to someone's happiness or perfection.

only *certain instances* of our own perfection are obligatory, and likewise only *certain instances* of the happiness of others. Indeed, Kant himself does introduce further specifcations. He holds that it is only the happiness of others in the sense of their *permissible* ends that we ought to promote, not in the sense of their *impermissible* ends (MM 6:388.05–08).16 Thus, the two obligatory ends do admit of further specifcation. What we can conclude from this reading is that the status of our own perfection and the happiness of others as obligatory ends has the character of a default status or a defeasible presumption.17 The question we should ask now is not whether these ends *are* obligatory, but in which respects they *cannot be*. Hence what Kant achieves by the argument is not that he strictly *proves* these ends to be obligatory, but that he shifts the burden of argument.

How do we get from these two obligatory ends to moral concern? Moral concern 'Kantian-style', I have suggested, is an attitude of recognition of, and resolve to do, one's duties (or some specifc duties) towards individuals (see Sect. 2.1). Kant's argument up to this point aimed to show that there are two obligatory ends, namely one's own perfection and the happiness of others. What still needs to be explained is how the obligatory ends lead to our *duties* towards self and others. To reiterate a point from Chap. 2, moral concern comes in formal and substantive variants. It can be recognition and resolve with regard to one's duties towards someone in general, or recognition and resolve with regard to some specifc duties towards that individual. So the two questions we should ask at this point are thus: How do obligatory ends lead to duties 'towards' someone?

16Of course, this restriction is explained by the doctrine of the highest good. If what we ultimately aim for is complete virtue with proportionate happiness, we should not promote impermissible ends. Another way to account for Kant's view is to emphasise that happiness itself comes in a physical and moral variant (Kang 2015, 14). So to promote the happiness of others, we must take care not to make them objects of contempt in their own eyes, and so should not help along any of their morally impermissible endeavours.

17This conception of the two obligatory ends of course opens up the possibility that the happiness of animals is to be excluded from the obligatory end. I believe Kant implicitly advances just this claim on the grounds that animals cannot "constrain" us (MM 6:442.10–12). However, once we have arrived at a rough conception of the two obligatory ends, the burden of argument rests on the denier. This mirrors Kant's own method of providing arguments *against* one's own happiness and the perfection of others as obligatory ends. For this reason, I suggest that animal-friendly Kantians should disagree directly with Kant's argument that there can be no duties towards animals because they cannot 'constrain' us.

And how are we to derive the specifc duties towards self and others which Kant thinks we have?

The frst question—how we arrive at duties 'towards'—once again leads us into territory without consensus. But regarding this issue, there is also little debate. Here is my preferred reading. Kant does not explicitly offer a route that leads from obligatory ends to duties-towards. He appears to assume that we are already there. To repeat, obligatory ends *are* duties (MM 6:382.06–07). And Kant appears to conceive of them as duties *towards* self and others. That is, the promotion of one's own moral perfection *is* a duty to self, and the promotion of the happiness of others *is* a duty to others.

But assuming the obligatory ends are already duties 'towards' individuals, what makes them so? There are two basic explanations, both of which have a basis in Kant's writings. The frst is that a duty 'towards others' is just a duty derived from the obligatory end of the happiness of others, and a duty 'towards self' is just a duty derived from the obligatory end of one's own self-perfection. Thus, the material of duty (the end we should adopt) determines whether it is a duty towards others or self. This fts well with the fact that according to Kant, our duties to self and our duties to others generally differ in what they demand of us. The second way of explaining the directionality of duties concerns the form or 'ground' of duty. Kant clearly adheres to the view that there can only be duties 'towards' those whose will, in a certain sense, "this constraint" us (MM 6:241.15–17; see MM 6:442.10). One aspect of this constraint is that the individual towards whom a duty is directed can always "release" the duty-bearer (MM 6:417.19). Therefore, if we ask whether the directionality of duties is a matter of the duties' material or form, Kant would answer yes to both. At any rate, the directionality of duties enters the stage together with obligatory ends, simply because these ends are already duties 'towards' someone. This gives us moral concern in the formal sense.18

As a preliminary upshot, Kant's account of moral concern for others (though not for ourselves) revolves around promoting happiness. To include animals in Kantian moral concern is to include them in this

18Of course, Kant's view that we have duties only towards those whose will 'necessitates' us presents a considerable problem to those of us who want to include animals in moral concern. I will deal with just this problem in the next chapter. To be upfront: I will argue that Kantians can simply reject the view that directionality is a matter of the form of duties, since it is already fxed by the material of duty.

happiness-promoting project in the right way. Although we have not yet considered in detail how the inclusion of animals might be achieved, we can already conclude that the line of moral concern can *at most* be drawn at the capacity for happiness. Animals who are incapable of experiencing hedonic states will inevitably remain excluded.

One can legitimately worry, however, if the obligatory ends comprise all we usually expect from Kant in terms of moral concern. What is often considered Kant's most important legacy in interpersonal ethics is the notion that others are not to be *treated as mere means*. How is this notion supposed to come out of the obligatory end of the happiness of others? Are we not rather left with a crude maxim of happiness maximisation? In the rest of this section, let me explore some things that follow from the doctrine of obligatory ends, and some that do not, regarding our treatment of others.

Among Kant's readers over the years, the notions of 'treatment as an end in itself' and 'treatment as a mere means' have taken on a life of their own, admitting of several popular interpretations. If we think of treatment as an end in itself as a treatment to which the recipient could rationally agree, given all information and suffcient time for refection, then Kant's doctrine of obligatory ends gets us fairly close. It would certainly be in the patient's *best self-interest* to agree to the promotion of their own happiness—though perhaps it would still be *rational* for the patient to disagree with such treatment on moral grounds, since her duties are different from ours.

However, some interpretations of 'treatment as an end in itself' and 'treatment as a mere means' are more ambitious than what the doctrine of obligatory ends can give us. Take, for instance, the idea that the good of individual 'ends in themselves' must never be sacrifced for the aggregate good of many. In animal ethics, this absolute opposition to moral tradeoffs is probably the idea most strongly associated with the labels 'Kantianism' and 'deontology'. Thus, Regan claims that "we fail to display proper respect for those who have inherent value whenever we harm them so that we may bring about the best aggregate consequences" (Regan 2004, 249). It is by no means obvious that so strong an idea follows from Kantian moral concern, understood along the lines I suggest. Moral concern as the recognition of our duties, and as the resolve to fulfl them, requires simply that we observe our duties. Certainly, our duties towards others rule out harming them *for the sake of our own happiness*, since our duty is to promote the happiness of others even at the expense of our own. But to what extent it rules out sacrifcing others for the happiness of *yet others* is a completely different question. In any case, we should not expect an answer to this question to follow from Kant's account of moral concern alone. If a prohibition of trade-offs is part of the Kantian picture at all, it must originate somewhere else in the system, particularly in his views on the resolution of (apparent) moral confict.19

To summarise, Kant's account of moral concern rests on his doctrine of obligatory ends. The kind of substantive moral concern we get from Kant's account may be in the ballpark of some popular ideas about 'treatment as an end in itself'. Other ideas that are often associated with Kant do not follow, specifcally a blanket prohibition of moral trade-offs. What is more, moral concern has only little to do with Kant's actual notion of 'ends in themselves'. Considered as objects of moral concern, we are *ends to be produced*. Things ought to be changed about us and our circumstances. In what sense we are 'ends in ourselves' is another matter, largely independent of our moral patienthood. At this point, one can legitimately wonder what the notion of an 'end in itself' is there for, if not to ground moral concern. Let me propose an answer in the following, fnal section.

### 4.5 What Is the Point of the Formula of Humanity, if Not Moral Concern?

So far in this chapter, I have rejected the popular idea that the FH is a solid basis for an account of moral concern. I have then addressed the worry that there is no other basis for moral concern in Kant by discussing the doctrine of obligatory ends. Another possible worry is now that my reading leaves the FH out of work. What, if not moral concern, could a principle be about, if it tells us to treat ourselves and others 'as ends in themselves', never as mere means? This is the topic of this section. My reading is only a variation over a theme already known from the literature. So my goal is simply to position my view in the debate and outline its main claims.

Reath (2013) has proposed a helpful ordering of different readings of the FH. On the one far end of the spectrum belong readings that see the

19Timmermann (2004) offers a less radical Kantian solution to confict cases in which the concerns of the many are statistically more likely to decide what is to be done. For a general discussion of moral conficts in Kantian moral philosophy, see Timmermann (2013).

FH purely as a substantive moral principle, usually a principle about moral concern. On the other far end stand those who read the FH purely as a 'formal principle', by which Reath means:

the internal constitutive principle of a domain of cognition or rational activity. It is the principle that defnes or describes and makes it possible to engage in that activity, thus the principle that any subject engaged in that activity must follow. (Reath 2013, 204)

When we read any formula of the Categorical Imperative as a formal principle, we view it as stating a constitutive rule of a rational capacity. As Kant points out in his overview of the different formulas (GMS 4:436.08–437.04), each formula emphasises a structural feature of the maxims of a good will: The Formula of Universal Law highlights that they have a certain form (that of a candidate for a universal law), the FH highlights that they have a certain matter (namely, humanity), and the Formula of Autonomy highlights that all these maxims stand in certain systematic relations to each other, forming a "realm" or "kingdom" akin to the realm or kingdom of nature structured by laws of nature. Thus, each formula points a spotlight at some feature of a good will, of practical autonomy. Kant himself claims that the Categorical Imperative "as such only asserts what obligation is" (MM 6:225.06–07).20

Now, Reath would strongly prefer a reading which brings together formal and substantive aspects of the FH (Reath 2013, 210). That is, he would rather interpret the formula as telling us *both* something about the nature of practical autonomy *and* how we ought to treat others. In his eyes, it is simply a desideratum for a plausible reading of the FH that it accommodates the "standard intuitive reading" of the FH as a substantive moral principle about concern (Reath 2013, 208). However, if we appreciate what the doctrine of obligatory ends does for Kant's account of moral concern, we simply do not *need* the FH to be a substantive moral principle. If we want, we are free to understand the FH and the other formulas as purely formal principles of practical autonomy, with all the substantive action-guidance being provided by the doctrine of obligatory ends later on.

20Here I have replaced Gregor's "affrms" with "asserts". It appears more straightforward as a translation for Kant's "*aussagt*" (MM 6:225.06). I take Kant to say that the Categorical Imperative tells us (asserts) what moral obligation or necessitation ('*Verbindlichkeit*') consists in.

So what does the FH tell us about practical autonomy? Recall the main formulation of the FH: "So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means" (G 4:429.10–12). The term 'humanity', I take it, refers to a rational being's capacity to act on a self-imposed law, rather than merely according to natural laws. This is practical autonomy, and the self-imposed law is the moral law. What the FH tells us, in a nutshell, is that we must take this capacity itself into view if we are to exercise it.

This is not to say that we must simply *contemplate* autonomy or the moral law in order to act autonomously. Rather, we must have autonomy in view *as an end*—an object with regard to which we determine our action (see MM 6:381.04–06). To be sure, it is not an end like any other. Many of our ordinary ends are external things we aim to produce through our actions. For instance, I might use the coffee maker as a means, a cup of coffee being my end. Unlike the future cup of coffee, autonomy is neither external to the agent nor is it a yet non-existent thing. It is already there and inherent in the very type of end-setting at issue. It is not an 'end to be produced' (G 4:437.26–27). Still, autonomy is an 'end' in the more general sense of an object with regard to which our action is determined. Of course, any particular maxim of a good will also has an end to be produced—for example, the happiness of some particular person, or the cultivation of some of the agent's own capacities that are serviceable to morality. But if we want to know more about these kinds of ends of a good will, we should not consult the FH, but the doctrine of obligatory ends. On the purely formal reading, the FH tells us *something* about one kind of end of a good will, but not *everything* about *all* kinds of ends it adopts.

Kant's point, as I read it, is that we can only act autonomously if we take autonomy into view as an end, namely by setting out to *exercise autonomy well*. Autonomy is the capacity to act on a self-imposed moral law. This capacity comes with its own standard, namely the moral law itself. And so we exercise autonomy *well* only if we set out to *follow* the moral law. So to treat humanity as an end, in effect, is to strive to follow the moral law. By contrast, to use humanity as a mere means is to use the capacity to act on a self-imposed law for any other purpose than to actually *follow* that law.

Here is a good place to provide an example, and the obvious choice is Kant's case from the *Groundwork*, the prohibition of prudential suicide. Kant imagines a man who is "someone who has suicide in mind" (G 4:429.16). In other words, this person is *considering* suicide. He is not acting on blind impulse but contemplating different ends which he could adopt. Some of these ends stem from nature, and others from reason. The opposition, it is quite clear for Kant, is one between inclination-based ends which demand suicide (to avoid greater future suffering) and ends autonomously set by pure reason which demand continuing an unpleasant life (in order to remain capable of fulflling one's duties). The man who contemplates suicide is aware of this opposition. But in order merely to *contemplate* the ends he could adopt from pure reason, the man has already had to impose the moral law on himself. He can *cognise* the moral law only by *self-imposing* it. And so he must *do* what the moral law demands, which is to refrain from suicide. Beings with the capacity to act on a self-imposed moral law must strive to exercise this capacity well, to actually follow the moral law. To contemplate the options and then do what inclinations demand is to use the capacity merely as a means for our own happiness. This is what the example illuminates.

To be sure, Kant's discussion of the four *Groundwork* examples also presents some diffculties for a purely formal reading. First, Kant also speaks of *human beings* as ends in themselves, not just humanity (e.g. MM 6:429.03–04; MM 6:429.20–23). This is somewhat misleading. Evidently, what Kant here means by 'human beings' are individuals *insofar as they are capable of acting on a self-imposed law*. At the end of the day, it is more straightforward to say *of the capacity* that it is an end in itself (that we must strive to exercise it well). To say the same of the *bearer* of the capacity is merely derivative.

A second problem is more serious: Kant also talks about humanity in the person of *others*. It too should be treated as an end in itself, never as a mere means. In general, I understand this as an emphasis on the fact that humanity as a capacity is not tied to particular individuals but is the same capacity in all autonomous beings. However, it cannot be denied that Kant himself appears to read an awful lot into the notion of treating others' humanity as an end in itself, especially in his discussion of false promises. He seamlessly begins to comment on whether others "can contain" the same end and takes this as a marker of whether humanity is being treated as an end (G 4:429f.). What is going on?

On my preferred reading, Kant is taking a detour here for the sake of adding some variety to the discussion. His overall goal in the examples is, still, to illustrate an aspect of morality using examples of obvious immorality. The situation in the false promise example is, once again, someone who *contemplates* different actions, one of which is giving a false promise in order to obtain some money. As in the case of prudential suicide, what should be shown is that in using autonomy to contemplate options, Kant's agent already subjects himself to the moral law. Humanity is inherently a capacity to be exercised *well*. So Kant could simply repeat his point from the suicide example: Autonomy inherently demands that we follow the moral law. And the agent in the example already knows what the moral law demands, namely not to make a false promise. In other words, Kant could also have emphasised that the lying promiser is using humanity *in his own person* as a mere means.

Instead, however, Kant chooses to emphasise humanity in the person on the receiving end of the action. I suggest his move is the following: A will who exercises autonomy *well* sets an end from pure reason, in accordance with the moral law. And if an end is set from pure reason, any rational being in any natural circumstances could have set it. This even includes those who stand to be harmed by the proposed action, such as the recipient of the false promise. That this person could not have set the same end shows that the false promiser's end cannot be set from pure reason. It must be set from inclination. And so by contemplating his options and opting for an inclination-based end, he has failed to treat humanity as an end in itself.

Although Kant's discussion of the four examples puts a purely formal reading of the FH to the test, formal readings also come with a general advantage: As Reath points out (Reath 2013, 224), formal readings make it much easier to account for the equivalence of the different formulations of the Categorical Imperative. The problem is familiar in the Kantian literature that the various formulas appear to give divergent moral guidance if we interpret them as substantive principles (Geiger 2015). It would appear as if the Formula of Universal Law, the Formula of the Law of Nature, the FH, and the Formula of Autonomy all make divergent substantive prescriptions, so that cases abound in which some formulas are observed, but not others. Formal readings avoid this diffculty altogether, since each of the formulas contains no substantive moral guidance from which the others could diverge.

What about Kant's argument that every rational being inevitably views her own existence as an end in itself? To cut a long story short, I want to suggest we are not truly dealing with an argument here. Kant is making a comment about the refexivity of pure practical reason. In the passage leading up to the FH, Kant asserts about the Categorical Imperative: "The ground of this principle is: *the rational nature exists as an end in itself*. The human being necessarily represents his own existence in this way" (G 4:429.02–04). Now if we interpret the term 'end in itself' along the lines I suggest, Kant is saying that any rational being views her own autonomy as a self-standing end—something to be used *well*, by its own inherent standard, which is the moral law. Therefore, Kant's comment simply states that we already regard our own autonomy as tied to the moral law.

Kant then adds that "every other rational being also represents his existence in this way consequent on just the same rational ground that also holds for me" (G 4:429.05–07). To this he attaches a footnote that has puzzled many readers: "Here I put forward this proposition as a postulate. The grounds for it will be found in the last Section" (G 4:429FN). Why does Kant think he has not supported his assertion enough? The answer is that up to this point, Kant has only asserted that the rational being, from a frst-person standpoint, takes her autonomy to be tied to the moral law. The capacity to act on a self-imposed law rather than merely natural laws always *presents itself to us* as something to be used *well*. But it could *present* itself thus even if morality were a mere phantom or chimera (G 4:445.08). The assertion Kant then makes, namely that myself and other rational beings *have a rational ground* for viewing our own autonomy in this way, is stronger. This stronger assertion requires that we show that morality is not a chimera, that we can indeed act on a moral law as opposed to natural laws. We must show, in other words, that the will really is free. And that is what Kant sets out to show later, as promised, in *Groundwork III*.

 It tells us that as soon as we exercise our capacity to act on a self-imposed law in any way, we are bound to exercise it well, thus to actually follow the moral law. As soon as we use this capacity to another end than to follow the moral law, we use it as a mere means. Thus we fail by a standard already internal to autonomous willing itself. To be sure, this section has not shown that *only* a purely formal reading of the FH can be coherent and fruitful—just that it too can be. Adopting a purely formal reading of the FH shifts our perspective away from the question whether animals are 'ends in themselves' and towards the question whether their happiness should be considered a part of the obligatory end of the happiness of others. This is the kind of reading we need in order to include animals in Kantian moral concern.

Between Kant and today's animal advocates, there are some disagreements. What they need *not* quarrel about, however, is the FH. Contrary to popular opinion, I have argued that the FH cannot be the basis for moral concern that many take it to be. The problem is that the substantive value the FH would establish (if it were to establish any) would have to emerge out of the conditions of agency—out of how "[the] human being necessarily represents his own existence" (G 4:429.02–04). But even if we grant that human beings ascribe to themselves some substantive value, it cannot be a value that accounts for moral concern. The value will demand that we have *esteem* for the agent. But this is not the same as demanding *concern*. We can take our hat off to someone, and even be in awe of their capacity to act from the moral law, but still see no reason whatsoever to reach out to them with moral concern. The infuential readings by Wood and Korsgaard cannot bridge this gap without equivocating esteem- and concern-related terms further down the line.

I have offered an alternative account both of how Kant arrives at moral concern and of what the FH is there for. Kant establishes moral concern with his doctrine of obligatory ends. The two obligatory ends are one's own moral perfection and the happiness of others. All of our materially specifc duties are derived from these ends. The philosophically crucial moves lie in establishing that there must be obligatory ends at all and that they are specifcally the two ends Kant mentions. If we grant Kant these moves, however, moral concern is established. The FH ends up playing no special role for moral concern. Its purpose is entirely different and lies in illuminating the good will. In a nutshell, the FH tells us that autonomous willing inherently calls for the observance of the moral law. Humanity is the capacity to act on a self-imposed law, and we can only exercise this capacity if we refectively take it into view (treat it as an end of our action) by striving to exercise it *well*. This requires that we set out to actually follow the moral law. We must not use our humanity merely to contemplate possible options and then go with what our inclinations favour. On this reading, the FH is a formal principle of an autonomous will, not a substantive principle about moral concern.

The main move of this chapter has been to set an issue aside. It may seem as though this is a mere preliminary to the real discussion, and in a way it is. But this preliminary is important. At the end of the day, the question at stake here is whether the exclusion of animals from moral concern follows from the very core of Kant's ethical system. The FH is, after all, a formula of the Categorical Imperative, the supreme moral principle. The most important message of this chapter is thus: No, the exclusion of animals is *not* a necessary feature of the supreme Kantian moral principle. The issue lies elsewhere.

#### References

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# Animals and the 'Directionality' of Duties

# 5.1 Do We Truly 'Share' the Moral Law? Thompson's Challenge to Kant

Kant ties the notion of a 'duty towards someone' to the idea of 'necessitating' or 'constraining' one another under the moral law (MM 6:442.10; see also MM 6:241.15–17). This is his stated reason for restricting moral status to persons, excluding animals (MM 6:442.11–12). Although Kant never makes explicit what this 'constraining' activity consists in, it is clear from the context that only individuals who *mutually share the moral law* can constrain each other in this way (MM 6:442.11–12; Wood 1998, 189; Korsgaard 2018, 123ff.; Ripstein and Tenenbaum 2020, 147). So when it comes to the conditions of the possibility of duties towards others, the animal advocate has a bone to pick with Kant.

In this chapter I propose a way to amend Kant's conception of moral duties so that moral duties can be directed towards animals. For my argument, I enlist some outside help from critics who object that moral agents, as Kant conceives of them, cannot genuinely *share* the moral law in the frst place. Thompson (2004) has argued that since the moral law is autonomous, individual Kantian agents stand under *separate moral laws with the same content each*, but not under *one and the same, shared moral law*. The upshot for Thompson is that Kant quite simply fails to account for the directionality of duties. The usual Kantian reaction has been to come up with an account of how the moral law is shared between Kantian persons

© The Author(s) 2022 N. D. Müller, *Kantianism for Animals*, The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01930-2\_5

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after all (Fanselow 2008; Darwall 2009; Palatnik 2018). For reasons I will explain in this chapter, this is not my preferred response. I argue that we can, and should, account for directionality in an entirely different way and that Kant provides all the resources we need.

In a nutshell, I suggest we should account for directionality in terms of the *content* of our duties. Duties towards others are just duties that are *about others* in a certain special way. Likewise, duties towards self are just duties that are *about ourselves* in a certain special way. But of course, duties can be *about* others even if those others do not share the moral law. So with my conception of directionality, I remove any elements of what today's ethicists sometimes call 'second-personal ethics' from Kant's system. What remains is a version of Kant's ethics that doubles down on the "fundamentally and radically frst-personal" features it already has (Timmermann 2014, 131; see also Sensen 2011, 120f.). I suggest it is all the better for it, certainly from the perspective of an animal ethicist. On the 'frst-personal' conception of directionality, there can very well be duties towards animals, and they do not categorically differ in form or ground from our duties towards other human beings.

To approach the notion of directionality, consider that we have moral duties *to* or *towards* specifc subjects. For instance, we seem to owe it *to* another person not to infict pain on them. The other person is not just a location where we can fulfl a blanket duty not to infict pain. It is no coincidence that only the affected person can *consent* to having pain inficted on them, for instance. Neither is it a coincidence that if we have inficted pain on someone, we must apologise specifcally *to them*, and only *they* can forgive us. These are just some of the ways in which the directionality of duties matters.

Kant would affrm all of this. As we have seen in Chap. 2, Kant takes us to have duties *towards* others and duties *towards* self. No duty is directed at no one. Kant furthermore pays close attention to the distinction between a duty *towards* someone and a duty merely *regarding* them (see MM 6:442.04–06). However, despite this eagerness to incorporate directionality into his system of moral philosophy, according to Thompson (2004), Kant has trouble accounting for it on his own terms.

Before explaining the problem in more detail, let me introduce some of the special vocabulary used in this debate. Thompson draws a distinction between 'monadic' and 'bipolar' normative judgements. Monadic normative judgements are judgements such as 'X did wrong in doing A', 'X has a duty to do A', and 'X has a right to do A' (Thompson 2004, 338). These judgements make an explicit reference only to one subject. Contrast this with judgements such as 'X wronged Y by doing A', 'X has a duty to Y to do A', and 'X has a right against Y that he do A' (ibid., 335). These make reference to two subjects and are hence called 'bipolar'.1 For Thompson, bipolar normative judgements correspond to bipolar normative *relations* or what he calls 'dikaiological orders' under which subjects stand (Thompson 2004, 352). All subjects who can be part of the same bipolar normative relation are called 'persons' relative to that relation (ibid.). For instance, all subjects who can stand in the relation of 'morally owing someone something' are *moral* persons. Similarly, all subjects who can enter into legal relations under Roman law are *legal* persons under the system of Roman law. Finally, the person who bears a duty is called the 'obligor', while the person towards whom the duty is directed is called the 'obligee' (Darwall 2012, 333).

Among other things, it matters how we account for the directionality or 'bipolarity' of moral duties because our account will determine the scope of subjects towards whom these duties can be directed.2 Thompson's central idea here is that we can only account for bipolarity in terms of *standing under a shared law*. This can be a natural idea if we consider contract law: Two individuals can only enter into a binding contract with each other if they both stand under the same system of contract law.3 And similarly, if there are to be binding bipolar *moral* relations, it seems they can only obtain between individuals who stand under a shared system of *moral* law. 'Thompson's puzzle', as it is sometimes called, is the challenge to account for the bipolarity of moral duties in terms of a shared moral law

1 Somewhat tendentiously, the word 'bipolar' seems to presuppose that the two subjects referred to in a moral judgement stand on equal footing in some way. Both are 'poles' of the same kind, merely appointed to opposite ends of a moral relation. I am going to deny this mutual equality.

2Thompson's own interest in bipolarity rather stems from his interest in *justice*. Justice is understood as a moral virtue agents have, or fail to have, as obligors in bipolar moral relations (Thompson 2004, 337). The just agent does well in fulflling her moral duties to others, in respecting the moral rights which others have against her, in giving others their moral due, and so on. Moral philosophers who want to account for justice ought therefore to account for bipolar moral relations.

3Admittedly, this principle only holds on a fairly authoritarian view of contracts, according to which bindingness derives from some third-party authority. I thank Markus Wild for pointing this out. The bindingness of contracts may simply be a matter of the mutual beneft that results from observance, not of external enforcement. What matters for the present discussion, however, is that the bindingness of Kantian ethical duties depends on a shared moral law just as contracts *on an authoritarian view* depend on a shared legal system.

without dubious assumptions. Thompson claims that Kant, along with Hume and Aristotle, is unable to account for bipolar moral relations in terms of a shared moral law, or at any rate that he would have to rely on "alarming metaphysical commitments" to do so (Thompson 2004, 379). It is helpful to consider this diffculty in more detail because it sheds light on what it means to 'share' the moral law, and why this sharing is so important for interpersonal duties.

Why would Kant fail to account for bipolar moral relations in terms of a shared moral law? Thompson's argument is best illustrated by his own example (Thompson 2004, 361f.): Say the Lombard people have their own system of laws under which all Lombards, and only the Lombards, are legal persons. And say that on the other side of an Alpine mountain range, by sheer coincidence, a people has independently developed which is indistinguishable from the Lombards, down to the language and the legal system. Call these people the Schlombards (though they, of course, call themselves the 'Lombards'). Thompson—convincingly, to my mind argues that Lombards and Schlombards do not live by *the very same* law, given that their cultures developed in complete isolation from each other. If a Lombard and a Schlombard should happen to meet on the mountain range and attempt to enter into a binding contract with each other, they would fail. They could not enter a binding contract under either Lombard or Schlombard law, since each is not a legal person under the legal system of the other.

The objection to Kant is that his moral philosophy puts moral agents in the position of Lombards and Schlombards (Thompson 2004, 382). For Kant, the moral law is only binding because it is autonomous. It is a selfimposed law. It can only be autonomous, however, because it is also *autochthonous*. That is, it is only a *self-imposed* law because it *originates* in the individual rational being (see Timmermann 2007, 114f.).4 Therefore, even though all moral agents individually give moral laws to themselves that have *the same content each*, they do not stand under *the very same law*. Their moral laws are distinct in origin and authority. Since they do not stand under the very same moral law, they cannot enter bipolar moral

4 I should add that moral agents give the moral law to themselves *as rational beings*. But considered purely as rational beings, persons have no individual idiosyncrasies—we are not qualitatively different from each other insofar as we are rational beings. However, this does not have to undermine Thompson's point. After all, rational beings are still individuated. We cognise *ourselves* as rational beings. And the bindingness of the moral law for a rational being still hinges on the fact that it is an autonomous law *for that individual rational being*.

relations under that law, argues Thompson. So duties 'towards' other people are impossible for Kant, if Thompson is right. There are only blanket duties, and other people are mere locations where we can fulfl them.

Thompson acknowledges that there is one way in which Kant can possibly account for bipolar moral relations. Kant might account for bipolarity by claiming that the moral law does after all have a common origin in all moral agents, namely in pure practical reason, which is not individuated (Thompson 2004, 382). On the one hand, however, this would put a lot of argumentative weight on the claim that pure practical reason is the *singular* or *unifed* cause of the moral law, and Thompson takes it that this would be an "alarming metaphysical commitment" (Thompson 2004, 379). Be that as it may, the analogy to Lombards and Schlombards would suggest that in order to be the very same law on Thompson's terms, the moral law would need a common *natural* origin in all moral agents, and it is at least not obvious that a common *nonnatural* origin in pure practical reason will do the trick. It seems, therefore, that Kant indeed faces a diffculty in accounting for bipolarity in terms of a shared moral law.

Kantians have come up with several answers. The most enthusiastic response to Thompson comes from Darwall (2009), who agrees that an autonomous law alone cannot account for bipolar moral relations (Darwall 2009, 138). Accordingly, Darwall advises that a Kantian account of the moral law should start *not* from the notion of an autonomous law alone, but from the notion of second-personal accountability (Darwall 2009, 153). This response to Thompson's challenge obviously comes at a steep price. To agree with Darwall, Kantians would have to sacrifce the view that the moral law is autonomous. But that is to sacrifce an absolutely central element of Kant's moral philosophy.

Fanselow (2008) proposes another response: Moral agents are not merely bound by the moral law in general, but also by *specifc duties*. These duties follow from the Categorical Imperative only with the addition of facts about the world. For instance, the duty to hold one's promises derives—on Fanselow's view5—from the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) with the addition of certain facts about promising and human psychology (Fanselow 2008, 96). The idea is that the duty not to make false promises follows from the FUL only if we add the fact that in a world of false

5 I do not share Fanselow's suggestion that duties can be *derived* directly from formulations of the Categorical Imperative. As we saw in Chap. 4, Kant rather arrives at specifc duties via the doctrine of obligatory ends.

promisers, human beings would not take promises seriously. Since moral agents are all part of the natural world, they share its facts. So even if the moral law is not truly shared among Kantian moral agents, their materially specifc duties are based on shared facts. According to Fanselow, this is enough of a shared origin to enable bipolar moral relations at the level of specifc duties, and that is what matters.

The main problem with Fanselow's response is that when Thompson asks for a shared origin that accounts for the bindingness of a bipolar moral relation, not just any shared origin will do. By way of analogy, the specifc contract into which the Lombard and the Schlombard attempt to enter has a shared natural origin in some respects. The Lombard and the Schlombard have met on the same mountain pass on the same day, have written their contract on the same piece of parchment, and so on. But none of this makes it the case that they indeed stand in a binding legal relation. For that, they would need a common system of contract law. Hence, what would be needed is a common origin of *the system of law under which the contract is binding*, not just a common origin of the contract itself. And since the Lombard and the Schlombard do not stand under the same system of contract law, their contract lacks the right kind of common natural origin. The same holds for Kantian moral agents. Even if they derive their duties from the Categorical Imperative using the same facts, the moral law which makes these duties binding still lacks a common natural origin, and so there is no common normative ground that can account for the bindingness of the Kantian bipolar moral relation. Hence, Fanselow's response is not enough to resolve Thompson's puzzle.

According to another Kantian response (Palatnik 2018), Kantian moral agents usually represent each other as beings with a will. On Palatnik's account, Kantian agents recognise each other in the world of appearances on the basis of "regularities or patterns characteristic of intentional activity" (Palatnik 2018, 294). It thus comes naturally to agents to recognise and represent others as rational beings. Representing others as rational beings however necessarily involves representing them as being bound by the moral law—the *same* moral law under which the agent herself stands (Palatnik 2018, 295). Thus, "we cannot represent (and recognise) anyone as a *practical reasoner*, as *a person in relation to ourselves*, unless we can see him as sharing our basic framework of practical thought, as falling under the principles of pure practical reason and fundamental concepts that follow from these principles" (Palatnik 2018, 300). Therefore, Palatnik's suggestion is that for Kant, a moral agent naturally recognises and represents others as beings bound by the same moral law by which she considers herself to be bound.

The claim that Kantian agents can recognise rational—that is, autonomous—beings by natural regularities or patterns might be hard for strict Kantians to accept, but this need not concern us here.6 What matters is what options are open to Kantians, not whether Kant himself would endorse them. However, Palatnik's suggestion faces a great challenge in solving Thompson's puzzle: It can only account for the bipolar moral relations in which moral agents *take themselves to stand*. It explains why we *consider ourselves to be* bound by bipolar moral relations. But Thompson's puzzle asks for an account of the bipolar relations in which moral agents *actually* stand. For example, the Lombard and the Schlombard represent each other as persons under the same law, but they still fail to enter a binding contract because they do not *actually* stand under the same law. Thus, Palatnik's response is not suffcient to resolve Thompson's puzzle either.

In summary, previous Kantian responses to Thompson's puzzle either face great diffculties, as I argued in the case with Fanselow and Palatnik, or come at a very high cost, as I argued in the case with Darwall. Of course, one could continue the conversation. My point is not that no Kantian solution to Thompson's puzzle is possible. What I hope to have shown, however, is that even the most competent Kantian philosophers have had a surprisingly hard time explaining how a shared moral law is supposed to account for the directionality of Kantian moral duties. This is an area where Kantian ethics stands in dire need of clarifcation. And this makes it an attractive area for modifcation.

Consider further that the various responses all strengthen Kant's denial of duties towards animals. On Darwall's account, bipolarity arises from practices or attitudes of holding each other second-personally

6Kant holds that a being could conceivably have empirical practical reason but not pure practical reason (CPrR 5:449.04–07). These would be beings who can understand and follow hypothetical imperatives, but they would be unable to give themselves the moral law. But of course, such beings would act intentionally. So only because agents can recognise intentional activity, it is not clear that they have to think of others as beings under the moral law. Furthermore, the inference from natural regularities to autonomy would have to be an inference by analogy, as Palatnik acknowledges: "[…] only by *projecting* our own framework of practical thought onto others can we *represent* or *recognise* them as persons at all" (Palatnik 2018, 295). Here, Kant would likely have to disagree. A behaviour that is analogous to rational action, he explicitly emphasises, does not necessarily indicate a rational cause (CPJ 5:464FN). Hence, Kant would not agree that we can recognise other rational beings on the grounds of empirical regularities or patterns.

accountable, in which animals do not participate. On Fanselow's account, bipolarity arises from deriving duties from the Categorical Imperative using facts about the shared natural world, another activity in which animals do not partake. And on Palatnik's account, bipolarity arises from an agent's supposition that the other is bound by the same moral law as herself, which once again is not true for animals. If Kantians want to be able to account for duties towards animals, they should look for a different response to Thompson's puzzle.

It is no coincidence that previous responses to Thompson's puzzle end up excluding animals all the more vehemently. After all, they share with Thompson a crucial assumption: that we must account for bipolar moral relations in terms of a shared moral law. So long as we come up with ways for Kantian ethics to accommodate a shared moral law, the resulting moral philosophy will inevitably exclude animals from moral concern. I therefore suggest a more radical, but also more elegant response to Thompson's puzzle: Kantians should *refuse* to solve it. They should deny altogether that bipolarity, in Thompson's sense of the word, is a feature of the moral landscape. And where there is nothing to be accounted for, there is no puzzle. This is a more robust Kantian response to Thompson, and at the same time it removes a major obstacle for the inclusion of animals in Kantian moral concern.

# 5.2 First-Personal Versus Second-Personal Accounts of 'Directionality'

To reiterate, Kant himself clearly thinks that only rational beings who mutually share the moral law could have duties 'towards' each other. The underlying reasoning is that only beings who share the moral law can 'necessitate' or 'constrain' each other (MM 6:442.10; see Wood 1998, 189; Korsgaard 2018, 123ff.). It is noteworthy that Kant says the same thing about the juridical domain—animals without legal duties cannot have legal rights because they cannot obligate others, he argues very briefy (MM 6:241.15–17). Thus, the suspicion is not too far-fetched that Kant, like Thompson, draws on an analogy between morality and legal systems when he ties bipolar relations to the sharing of a law. However, I will now suggest that Kant can also inspire a rather different understanding of bipolarity or directionality. This alternative understanding does not rely on the notion of a shared moral law. So we can save Kant with the resources he provides.

To start with, consider some differences between Kant and Thompson when it comes to moral bipolarity. For Thompson, monadic duties form a distinct type from bipolar duties. For instance, according to Thompson there is a monadic duty *not to lie*, over and above the bipolar duty *towards the conversation partner* not to lie (Thompson 2004, 339f.). This corresponds to the intuition that we can feel guilty simply for *having lied*, not only for *having wronged someone by lying* (Thompson 2004, 340). Kant would not draw the distinction in this way. For Kant, *all* duties are bipolar or 'directed' towards an obligating subject, and there is no such thing as a genuinely monadic or 'undirected' duty. Consider the structure of the *Doctrine of Virtue*: Here, Kant makes an exhaustive distinction between duties *to self* and duties *to others* (MM 6:413.07–08). There is no third option. What about Thompson's example of feeling guilty simply for having lied? Kant would agree that a liar has more to feel guilty about than merely having wronged someone else, because we also have a duty *towards self* not to lie (MM 6:429.04–06). But he would fatly deny that there is an 'undirected' duty not to lie.

None of this is to say that Kant is obsessed with the bipolar nature of our duties. He is happy to omit the bipolar element from a duty's description when it is irrelevant. For Kant, the monadic and the bipolar are simply *modes of description*. For Thompson, they are *types of duties*. This is a signifcant difference. In fact, when Kant and Thompson talk about 'duties towards', they may not be talking about the same thing. And so it is anything but obvious that bipolarity in Thompson's sense must be a feature of the Kantian moral landscape at all. Kant is only committed to bipolarity in his own sense, not Thompson's.

Another, though related difference between Thompson and Kant concerns 'moral authority'. Think of authority as the capacity to create or eradicate duties for someone. Kant's moral philosophy is 'frst-personal' in that it derives duties from an autonomous moral law. He considers heteronomy of the will to be "the source of all spurious principles of morality" (G 4:441.02). In Kant's view, then, only the rational being herself has moral authority. Of course, the rational being still has no capacity to create or eradicate duties *at her whim*. Still, duties only derive from the moral law the agent gives to herself. I will call this the 'frst-personal Kantian view'. Now, my radical suggestion is that frst-personal Kantians should not bother arguing that the moral law is interpersonally 'shared' in any interesting sense. They should stick steadfastly to their claim that the moral law is autonomous and autochthonous, period. And so, for frst-personal Kantians, there is no such thing as second-personal moral authority. Others do not impose the moral law on me, and they consequently cannot create or eradicate any of my duties.

Contrast this view with a 'second-personal Kantianism' along Darwall's lines, which would derive duties from a moral law that is in turn grounded in second-personal accountability (Darwall 2009, 153). The idea is, in a nutshell, that the moral law only arises from acts of second-personal address such as making claims on each other, objecting to each other, holding others answerable, and so on. These acts can, but do not have to, consist in verbal utterances. They can also be reactive attitudes. For instance, we hold others accountable for their wrongdoing simply by *resenting* them. If the moral law derives from such acts of second-personal address, it is an essentially interpersonal law. An important upshot of this is that others have moral authority ('second-personal authority'). They can put others under obligation or lift obligations off their shoulders.7 For instance, by resenting me, another person puts me under obligation to apologise. By forgiving me, she lifts this obligation off my shoulders.

The view that others have moral authority helps second-personal Kantians account for the bipolarity of duties. We can simply say that duties are directed 'towards' the individual whose moral authority makes it binding.8 Evidently, this option is not open to frst-personal Kantians, who do not believe in this kind of moral authority. How, then, can they account for bipolarity?

Kantians typically insist that "directionality is determined by the source of constraint (your rational will), not by the nature of the resulting object of choice" (Ripstein and Tenenbaum 2020, 147). While this seems like a

7Kant evidently has his second-personal moments, for instance, when he asserts that the obligee can always release the obligor (MM 6:417.18–19), or of course in the passages already quoted where he excludes animals as obligees. That is no problem for my point here, because with frst-personal Kantianism I merely want to highlight one line of thinking to which Kant's moral philosophy lends itself. My claim is not that Kant unambiguously followed this line of thinking, but only that Kantians could save themselves some trouble by following it.

8This is admittedly a truncated version of the second-personal Kantian view. One bit I leave out is the (admittedly important) role of the moral community in second-personal Kantian views. A second-personal Kantian may argue that I have a duty towards X to A if the moral community (of which X is a member) holds me accountable for my doing or omitting A. This however does not change what I am trying to illustrate here, which is that the will of the other—the obligor or the moral community on the obligor's behalf—is involved in giving a duty its normative force on a second-personal Kantian view.

correct representation of Kant's view, it is also a view Kantians can choose to reject. We can go the other way and argue that moral directionality is precisely a matter of what our duties are *about*. According to this view, a duty *towards X* is a duty that is *about X* in a certain way. Never mind who makes a duty binding—consider instead what duties ask us to do and why! Put in Kantian terms, bipolarity is a matter of the *content* or *material* of duty, that is, the end or action we ought to pursue (MM 6:398.5–20). It is not a matter of the *form* of duty, that is, that end or action's character of moral prescription. Call this the *content approach* to bipolarity, as opposed to Thompson's (and Darwall's, Fanselow's, Palatnik's) *form approach*.

How exactly do duties have to be *about X* in order to be duties *towards X*? Interestingly enough, we can gather a version of the content approach from Kant himself. In particular, consider how Kant frst introduces the distinction between duties to self and duties to others in the *Doctrine of Virtue* (MM 6:385f.). As we have seen in Chap. 4, Kant here moves from the notion of a Categorical Imperative to that of an 'end that is also a duty' (MM 6:385.31). That is, he moves from the law that prescribes an action unconditionally to the end of that prescribed action. He then draws the central distinction between the obligatory ends insofar as they pertain to our treatment of *others* and *self* (MM 6:385.31–386.14). This is, effectively, how he introduces the two duty-types. And with this conception in mind, we can fesh out the content approach to bipolarity:

#### **The content approach to bipolarity**

Any duty is a duty towards self iff it is about the promotion of moral self-perfection.

Any duty is a duty towards another person X iff it is about the promotion of X's happiness.

For the sake of illustration, consider our duties towards self as Kant conceives of them. In particular, take the prohibition of prudential suicide. Our duty not to commit prudential suicide is a duty 'towards self' insofar as it is about our own moral perfection. We ought to keep our natural shape serviceable to morality, and of course being alive is a basic condition for duty-observance (see MM 6:421.10–14). Similarly, our duties towards others are those that are about the promotion of their happiness. Our duty of benefcence is a duty 'towards' others because it is about the promotion of their happiness. Kant's treatment of the end that is also a duty therefore gives us all we need. The content approach to bipolarity suffces to account for the distinction between duties to self and others.

At this point, one might object that the content approach removes Kant's distinction between duties *towards* someone and duties merely *regarding* them. After all, both duties are *about* the same individual. But this objection would miss an important point, namely that the content approach does not equate directionality with 'being-about' in general. For a duty to be a duty *towards X*, it must more specifcally be *about X's happiness insofar as it is a part of the obligatory end of the happiness of others*, or *about X's moral perfection insofar as it is a part of the obligatory end of one's own moral perfection*. Duties merely *regarding X* are duties that are about X, but not about X's happiness or moral perfection as part of the obligatory ends.

Consider one of Kant's own examples, the duty not to wantonly destroy beautiful plants (MM 6:443.02–04). This is a duty *regarding* the plant, not *towards* it. This is because the duty is *about the plant*, but *not about the plant's happiness or its moral perfection*. This duty is all about the perfection of the moral agent as part of one of the obligatory ends. Hence, the content approach does not jettison the towards-regarding distinction.

Another objection could be that focusing on content in the proposed way blurs the line between duties towards self and others. One could rightly point out that for Kant, there exists at least one duty that is about our happiness but is a duty towards self: our indirect duty to secure a minimum of happiness for ourselves (G 4:399.03–07; MM 6:388.17–30). But this objection would be fawed too. Consider that this duty is about our own happiness only *insofar as it forms a part of the obligatory end of our own moral perfection*. We should not allow ourselves to become too unhappy, says Kant, because "want of satisfaction with one's condition […] could easily become a great *temptation to transgression of duty*" (G 4:399.04–07). So even if this duty is about our happiness, it is only about our happiness *as part of the obligatory end of our own moral perfection*. In this way, the content approach upholds the line between duties to self and others.

However, there could be another, more philosophical objection to the content approach to bipolarity. Darwall explicitly argues against the view that duties towards others are just duties with a certain content:

We can easily imagine a society (Feinberg's 'Nowheresville') in which it is thought morally wrong to step on others' feet, unless, say, they desire or do not mind one's doing so, but where the latter is not seen as a giving consent that can be understood only within a bipolar dikaiological order. So viewed, others' will and preference would appear simply as features of the moral landscape that bear on moral obligations period. (Darwall 2012, 344f.)

The Nowheresville example illustrates that a duty *towards X* not to step on X's foot is something more than merely a duty *not to step on X's foot*. Rather, according to Darwall's suggestion, duties towards X must be explained in terms of X's second-personal authority, her capacity to obligate the agent under the moral law. By treating others "simply as features of the moral landscape", we turn them into static factors of duty and overlook their subjecthood, or so Darwall worries. Once again, we run the risk of treating others merely as *locations* at which our pursuit of duties can take place (this worry also plagues Korsgaard 2018, 159). In the face of this objection, what can be said on behalf of the content approach?

It is quite intuitive that a duty *towards X* not to step on X's foot is something more specifc than merely a duty *not to step on X's foot*. But in itself, that cuts no ice with the content approach. According to this approach, to say that a duty is directed 'towards X' does add something to the duty's description: that it is a duty *about the promotion of X's happiness*. In saying that a duty is directed 'towards X', we indicate that the route of reasoning to this duty passes through the obligatory end of others' happiness. So the frst-personal Kantian simply agrees with Darwall that the bipolar element adds something to a duty's description. But it adds nothing that needs accounting for in second-personal terms.

What about Darwall's more general worry that morality without second-personal elements leads to 'Nowheresville'? Are others bound to be mere 'features of the moral landscape' on a frst-personal view? Yes and no. First-personal Kantians deny that others can help *bring about* the moral landscape. The moral landscape exists because—and *only* because the moral agent gives the moral law to herself. In this sense, others really are just features of the moral landscape. They register on a radar set up by rational beings from the frst-person standpoint. But this does not imply that others cannot play a unique role in determining what actions are prescribed. Recall that for Kant, "what [others] may count as belonging to their happiness is left to their own judgement" (MM 6:388.08–09). The more we emphasise the role of another's agency as a guide for our practical benevolence, the more active their involvement in our duties is. Therefore, we should not conceive of others as *static* features of the moral landscape. They are uniquely *dynamic* features. The frst-personal Kantian view is sensitive to the fact that others are active subjects. What is denied is only that the subjecthood of others helps to *create* or *eradicate* any parts of the moral landscape.

### 5.3 Rejecting Thompson's Challenge

Against this backdrop of Kantian conceptions, let me propose a novel response to Thompson's puzzle. To reiterate, the puzzle is the challenge of accounting for moral bipolarity in terms of a shared moral law. Kantians have trouble meeting this challenge. I have now argued that Kant's view of bipolarity differs from Thompson. In fact, the words 'duty towards X' may mean something quite different for the two.

First-personal Kantians cannot account for bipolarity in terms of a shared moral law. We must accept this. But that is not to admit defeat in the face of Thompson's puzzle, to the contrary! Rather, frst-personal Kantians can simply deny that bipolarity in Thompson's sense exists. Our duties simply do not have any feature that needs accounting for in secondpersonal terms. To be sure, this is not a solution to Thompson's puzzle, but a rejection of its presupposition. This rejection also avoids the diffculties of previous responses to the puzzle: controversial metaphysical commitments (Thompson's Kant), the Lombard-Schlombard problem (Fanselow, Palatnik), and the exclusion of animals from direct moral consideration (all of the above, also Darwall).

It may seem that what I propose is easier said than done. After all, the conception of bipolarity we fnd in Thompson and Darwall is supposed to describe certain aspects of moral life. Moral life, the basic idea goes, consists not just of monadic duties. It consists of essentially *interpersonal* relations.  To use Thompson's term, the moral landscape is full of 'dikaiological orders'.

For second-personal Kantians, interpersonal relations uniquely connect obligor and obligee.9 Part of this is that the obligee has a special standing vis à vis the obligor. Case in point: Only obligees have the power to *consent* (Darwall 2012, 345). And when they have been wronged, obligees have a

9To repeat, the obligee is the subject towards whom there exists a duty. The obligor is the subject who has the duty (Darwall 2012, 333).

special standing too: Only the obligee can *forgive* the wrongdoer, and only the obligee is owed *apologies* (Darwall 2012, 346). Naturally, Darwall would explain these features of moral life under reference to secondpersonal authority (Darwall 2012, 347). As frst-personal Kantians who follow the content approach, are we to fatly deny that moral life has these features? Is everybody in a position to consent for anyone else? Can everybody forgive wrongdoers? Do wrongdoers have to apologise to everybody equally?

Fortunately, no such absurd claims follow. First-personal Kantians can account for ordinary practices of consenting, forgiving, and apologising, with different means. They can use what I will call the 'defate-and-deny tactic':

#### **The defate-and-deny tactic**

For any supposed exercise of second-personal authority, defate it, as far as possible, to an exercise of the moral authority of the moral agent plus the capacity of others to determine the content of an agent's duty. Deny the rest.

To give a preliminary example: Consider the ordinary practice of forgiving others for past wrongs. Darwall would consider forgiveness to be an act of release-from-duty. Among other things, to forgive someone is to release them from the duty to make amends. But we do not have the power to release others from any of their duties on a frst-personal Kantian view. Either they have a duty to make amends that derives from the autonomously imposed moral law, or they do not. Us others have no say in the matter. What the frst-personal Kantian can say, however, is that to verbally forgive is to provide information about the conditions of one's happiness. Broadly, it is to signal that one is 'over it'. The obligee verbally forgives the wrongdoer and thus makes it clear that no more amends are required for her happiness. This does not change anything about the wrongdoer's duties, but it makes it clear that making further amends are not what their duties towards the obligee demand of them. This is the 'defate' bit of the tactic. What the frst-personal Kantian cannot account for is forgiveness as an act of literally lifting a duty off the obligor's shoulders, and so she should simply deny that this is possible. We have no power to create or eliminate the duties of others. This is the 'deny' bit of the tactic.

Defate-and-deny is a *tactic* because it can be applied in various contexts. No matter which specifc examples adherents of second-personal authority bring up, defate-and-deny can be applied. Of course, the tactic must prove its worth in particular applications, but it would be futile to attempt a comprehensive list of supposedly 'second-personal' aspects of moral life.10 To second-personal Kantians, the moral landscape is saturated with second-personal authority. In Sect. 5.4, let me merely attempt to illustrate the proposed tactic by discussing Darwall's most prominent, aforementioned examples: consent, forgiveness, and apologies. We will see that so much about the giving and obtaining of consent, about forgiving, and about apologising can be 'defated'—particularly to the determining of the content of another's duties and informing them about it—that very little has to be 'denied'. The frst-personal Kantian thus does not have to reject these moral practices, just their explanation in second-personal terms.

### 5.4 Consent, Forgiveness, and Apologies Without Second-Personal Authority

Darwall makes it clear that he conceives of giving consent as "an exercise of a 'normative power', in this case, to release someone from a bipolar obligation he would otherwise have" (Darwall 2012, 345). Consent is thus, like forgiveness, an instance of release-from-duty. As we have already seen, we have no such power to create or eradicate duties for others on a frst-personal Kantian view. Therefore, the defate-and-deny tactic should be applied to release-from-duty, and by extension to consent.

A part of what Darwall means by 'releasing' someone from their duty can be defated to powers the frst-personal Kantian can accept: (1) We can *inform* others that what they think is their duty is not in fact their duty. For example, I can inform others that I have no desire to drink coffee, implying that their duty towards me to promote my happiness in no way requires that they buy me coffee; (2) We can *set ends*, or *reorder* our ends. Since others should promote our happiness primarily by assisting us in our

10 Some more examples that come to mind are promising (Darwall 2006, 203ff.) demanding something (Schaber 2014), morally blaming others, complaining or objecting to others, or prohibiting others from doing things. The defate-and-deny tactic is meant to apply to all of these examples. Of course, it would take much more work to defend the results of the defate-and-deny tactic on philosophical grounds—to show that purely frst-personal accounts of supposedly second-personal practices can be adequate. I do not claim to do that work here. My aim is merely to sketch the general direction in which Kantianism for Animals would take us.

own endeavours, this changes what others should do. For example, if I initially had the desire to have coffee, but noticed that I did not bring any money and would have to rely on a favour from a colleague, I might reconsider whether I really want any coffee given the circumstances. In both situations, it would be perfectly reasonable for me to tell my colleague "it's alright, you don't have to buy me coffee". With my utterance I would not have lifted any duty from my colleague's shoulders. My colleague's duty is still what it was, namely to promote my happiness. But by signalling the conditions of my happiness, I would have provided a clue regarding the content of the other person's duty. That is enough.

What the frst-personal Kantian cannot account for, of course, is the supposed act of literally *erasing* someone else's duty. Here, the 'deny' part of the defate-and-deny tactic comes into play: The frst-personal Kantian simply denies that this act is possible. If the obligee really has a duty towards us, it is not in our power to erase it. This has implications for the limits of our power to 'release' others from their duties: We can give false or misleading information about what another's duty is (say, out of politeness). Others should not take such utterances at face value. For example, suppose I politely tell my colleague "it's okay, you don't have to buy me coffee", but really I would love to have a cup. In this case, my colleague's duty to promote my happiness still demands buying me coffee. What matters is not any internal or external act of second-personal address, but my happiness.11

Put in this way, the frst-personal Kantian view is likely much stricter than Kant's own view. Kant evidently thinks that if X has a duty towards Y, then Y can always release X from that duty at will. This is the assumption that raises the basic problem with duties to self in the *Doctrine of Virtue* (MM 6:417.07–22). The problem is this: It would seem, at frst sight, that duties towards self could not be stable, because we could release ourselves from these duties at will (ibid.). Evidently, this problem only arises if we understand release-from-duty as a literal *erasure* of duty by an act of the

11Conversely, we cannot erase our own moral *rights* on the frst-personal Kantian view I propose. On an orthodox Kantian view, rights are grounded in duties, not vice versa. We have rights against others simply in the sense that they have certain duties against us. Therefore, if we cannot erase another's duties, we cannot erase our rights. However, this does not make our rights static. After all, which duties others have against us is contingent on what promotes our happiness, which we in turn shape by setting happiness-derived ends. In one sense, then, all rights are inalienable on the frst-personal Kantian view, but in another sense they can be acquired and lost as a consequence of acts of instrumental practical reason.

obligee's will. Kant's solution is that duties to self are really duties of the *homo phaenomenon*—the human being as a subject of inclinations—to the *homo noumenon*—the human being as a subject of a rational will (MM 6:418.14–23). But it is not as though Kant really struggled with this problem. Rather, posing and resolving the problem serves a heuristic function. Kant's discussion illuminates the nature of duties to self: When we owe something to 'ourselves', we owe it to ourselves purely as rational beings. Kant could have made the same point without using this specifc problem as a heuristic device. What is more, the underlying assumption that obligees can eradicate duties at will does not seem to carry any weight anywhere else in Kant's oeuvre. Kant does not mention it in other contexts, let alone build any elaborate arguments upon it. So Kantians can confdently dispense with the assumption that obligees can eradicate duties at will. No serious diffculties follow.

What happens if we apply the frst-personal view of release-from-duty to the more specifc case of giving consent? On Darwall's conception, if Y consents to X's doing A, then Y releases X from the duty towards Y not to do A (Darwall 2012, 345). For instance, a patient may consent to a surgical procedure, thus releasing the medical personnel from the duty to refrain from that procedure, say, out of respect for bodily integrity. Darwall emphasises that by giving consent, we do more than merely to inform another that we "do not mind" (Darwall 2012, 344). On the frst-personal Kantian view, however, it is just that. Or at any rate, to give consent is *either* to inform others about their duty *or* to make up one's mind so that it becomes clear what their duty is. In certain circumstances, this may indeed amount to no more than saying that one does not mind. For instance, if a medical patient has her priorities in clear order and knows the impact of a procedure on her happiness, she can inform the medical personnel that their duty to promote her happiness does not require that they refrain from this procedure. In other cases, however, the story may be much more complicated. Perhaps the patient does not initially have a clear picture of whether she prefers the consequences of the procedure to the consequences of its omission. In such cases, obtaining the patient's consent also forces her to make up her mind. In either case, the patient is not *eradicating* any duties on the part of the medical personnel, but merely makes it clearer what the content of their duties is.

The frst-personal view on giving consent may invite the worry that it confers the power to consent on too many people. It seems to confer this power on anyone who can provide good information about that person's happiness. But it does not. First, the patient's happiness may depend on the very right to determine *herself* whether she allows the procedure. Human beings usually do not like being paternalised, and our practical benevolence should be sensitive to this fact.12 Secondly, the patient of course has better epistemic access to the conditions of her own happiness and to the ends by means of which she aims to achieve it. In typical cases, patients will therefore be in a uniquely privileged position to give consent to actions which impact them. And this unique position should be our reference point when we conceive of the position in which one should be to validly give consent at all. On this conception, usually only the impacted subject will be in a position to consent.

However, exceptions are possible. There might be *uninformed* or *misinformed* obligees, and the frst-personal Kantian can easily explain why we should not take their consent at face value. They are, at least in this instance, not good enough informants about the conditions of their own happiness. There could also be *irrational* patients: They know the ends whose realisation would make them happy, and they know the procedure is not conducive to these ends, yet they fail to rationally combine these pieces of information. Even though withholding consent would be in their best interest, they consent. Suppose there are others who have, let us assume, heard a comprehensive and true frsthand account of the patient's desires and ends, and of the procedure's harmful impact. On a frstpersonal Kantian view, those rational and informed others may be in a better position to give or deny consent than the patient. The crucial and diffcult question is, of course, who is to count as uninformed, misinformed, or irrational. It merits philosophical attention in its own right. What is clear from a Kantian point of view, however, is that arrogance is a vice, and self-serving rationalisations are a straightforward danger. So we should approach the question whose consent counts with humility, even though we do not get to simply avoid it. We must not simply presume that we know better what is good for others than they themselves do.

So far, the frst-personal Kantian take on consent may sound largely destructive. But there are also more constructive upshots, particularly

12This is not always the case. There may be decisions about which people do not care, and regarding which they have no special intent of making a decision for themselves. For the frst-personal Kantian, such indifferent consent does not carry much weight, nor does the omission of indifferent consent. After all, it gives us, the obligors, no useful information about the happiness of the obligee.

when we think about consent as it applies to animals: For traditional, second-personal Kantians, the fact that animals cannot consent makes a world of difference.13 It indicates that animals cannot have moral authority, do neither put us under obligation nor lift duties off our shoulders, and more generally are not proper objects of moral concern in their own right. Not so on the frst-personal view. Here, the obtaining and giving of consent is merely a means of conveying information about desires, practical ends, and their ordering, or to make up our minds. What really matters at the end of the day is not an act of second-personal address. What matters is that the obligor gets the conditions of the obligee's happiness right. Animals do not speak a human language. Still, we can take steps to get it right what makes them happy (for instance, paying close attention, counteracting our own biases, considering scientifc evidence). The fact that animals cannot consent, be it verbally or by reactive attitude, is of little consequence. It merely shows that we should take alternative measures to ensure that we get the conditions of an animal's happiness right, given that they cannot verbally tell us what our duty demands. Paying close attention to the animal and relying on the best information we have about its wellbeing can serve largely the same purpose as the obtaining of informed consent from human beings. It should be treated as equally morally important.

A similar difference emerges when we compare Darwall and the frstpersonal Kantian on the topic of forgiveness. On Darwall's view, "forgiveness acknowledges the other's responsibility for wronging one, but refrains from pressing claims or 'holding it against' him" (Darwall 2009, 72). By 'pressing claims' and 'holding it against him', Darwall means the exercise of second-personal moral authority. To 'press claims' is, among other things,14 to create or keep in existence a duty for the wrongdoer to apologise, to blame herself, or to make amends for her wrongdoing. Darwall's

13What makes the difference is not that animals *do not* consent, but that they *cannot*. Darwall emphasises that second-personal authority is not entirely a matter of *actual* acts of second-personal address on behalf of the obligee (Darwall 2007, 64). Rather, it is a matter of acts of second-personal address which the obligee—or indeed the moral community of which she is a part—is *prone* to make (ibid.). However, none of this changes the fact that it is acts of second-personal address of some kind that create or eradicate duties on Darwall's view. This is what the frst-personal Kantian should deny.

14Darwall himself mainly emphasises the role of *reactive attitudes*, particularly of resentment (see Darwall 2012, 346). To 'press claims' is to take a resentful attitude towards an obligee. That is however not the bit of the story with which the frst-personal Kantian must disagree, and for this reason I leave it aside.

picture is that wronging someone leads to special duties of the wrongdoer to the wronged, and thus the wronged are obligees with a special authority to free the wrongdoer from these special duties (see Darwall 2012, 356).

We can account for part of what Darwall means by 'forgiveness' in frstpersonal Kantian terms: A verbal utterance of forgiveness can serve the purpose of informing someone that apologising, self-blame, or amends are not the content of her duty. For instance, X may forgive Y for having stolen an inconsequential amount of money several years ago. In the end, no harm came to X from Y's theft, and the utterance of forgiveness is quite simply a way of communicating this fact. In verbally forgiving Y, X signals that the promotion of her happiness does not require reparations for this act. Perhaps in this example, verbal forgiving may be a somewhat vacuous ritual. But in other cases, verbal forgiving can convey crucial information about a person's happiness. Say X neglected the infant Y, who has now grown up. The adult Y's utterance of forgiveness for X may convey the anything but obvious!—information that Y's happiness is no longer impacted by this serious wrong. And even much more complicated arrangements are conceivable. For instance, forgiving may be an intrapersonal process through which someone who has been wronged actively *emancipates* herself from the impact of past wrongdoing. In forgiving, one performatively denies the wrongdoer any lasting impact. In this case, verbal forgiving is not merely an *informative* act, but also an act of self-assertion.

On the other hand, the frst-personal Kantian cannot agree with everything that Darwall says about forgiveness. For a frst-personal Kantian, forgiving others cannot be an act of lifting any duties off their shoulders. Just as the frst-personal Kantian view limits our power to consent, it limits our power to forgive. Our utterances of forgiveness, like our utterances of consent, can convey false or misleading information, and in these instances we should not take them at face value (except perhaps as performative self-assertions).

When it comes to animals, the implications of the frst-personal Kantian view on forgiveness echo what I have said about consent. Animals do not forgive, but on its own this is of little consequence. What matters is that we get the conditions of another's happiness right, because that is what we must promote. And of course, the conditions of an animal's happiness can be shaped by our past wrongs, and animals can 'get over' that infuence over time. Animals who have suffered a certain type of abuse may have different needs than their conspecifcs who have not. Our duties are sensitive to such individual differences in happiness. Hence, it is crucial that we pay close attention to how our actions have impacted an animal and how we can promote its happiness specifcally against the backdrop of our wrongs.

Apologies are, among other things, pleas for forgiveness. Darwall conceives of apologies partly as pleas for the eradication of special duties that wronging someone creates, perhaps a duty to blame oneself or a duty to make reparations.15 One quite intuitive upshot of this conception is that apologies must be directed only *from the wrongdoer to the wronged* (Darwall 2012, 346). Nobody else can apologise for this particular wrong, and one can apologise to nobody but the wronged. After all, Darwall's view entails that only the wronged has the authority of an obligee to free the obligor from her duties (ibid.).

Again, the frst-personal Kantian can defate part of what Darwall means by 'apologies'. The frst hint comes from Darwall himself: "If a victim comes upon an unaddressed admission of guilt and expression of sincere regret in her victimiser's diary, she has not discovered an apology" (ibid.). Of course, it is true that the verbal *expression of apology* must always be addressed to the wronged. But it is a separate question whether the *duty to apologise* is always owed to the person to whom the verbal utterance is addressed.

For Darwall, apologies are crucially *more* than admissions of guilt and regret. For the frst-personal Kantian, they are basically that, plus perhaps an expression of *resolve* to act better in the future. To issue such utterances may be our duty to others. After all, it is quite plausible that apologies promote the happiness of those we have wronged. For instance, apologies often lead to forgiveness, and forgiveness is good for our mental health and well-being (see Toussaint and Webb 2005). So apologies can be a formidable way for wrongdoers to promote the happiness of the wronged, in a way no one else can. But apologies may also give the person we have wronged some pleasant reassurance that, having acknowledged the wrongness of their action, the wrongdoer is less likely to repeat it. The frst-personal Kantian therefore has some foothold to argue that apologies are owed to the obligee based on the duty to promote their happiness. This also explains why a secret expression of guilt in a diary cannot serve the usual purpose of an apology, since it is not intended to promote the

15Again, this is not the part of Darwall's conception that he emphasises most, but it is the part with which the frst-personal Kantian must take issue.

happiness of the wronged. It is equally clear, however, that exceptions are possible such that apologies do not promote the happiness of those we have wronged. For instance, if the wrong in question is very grave, an apology may indeed trivialise it. Sometimes, 'sorry' does not cut it. In such cases, it would indeed go *against* our duty towards others to apologise.

However, we may still have a duty towards *self* to apologise to those we have wronged. Our duties to self, on the frst-personal Kantian conception, are about moral self-perfection. Apologies serve this end by helping us cultivate a sense of duty. The practice of apologising forces us to recall our wrongs and to indulge in feelings of guilt. If we additionally conceive of apologies as expressions of resolve to act better in the future, it is even more evident how this ritual promotes moral self-perfection. Apologies help us act better next time around.

The frst-personal Kantian still denies that apologies should be understood as pleas to be freed from the special duties we incur by wronging others, since that plea would be impossible for others to fulfl. Obligees cannot eradicate our duties. Yet again, the focus is shifted away from the act of second-personal address and onto the purpose it serves. The apologies we ought to utter, in one way or another, serve to promote the happiness of others or our own moral perfection. What matters is that we achieve these obligatory ends rather than that we use the specifc means of a verbal act of second-personal address.

Again, there are constructive upshots regarding animals. Like consent and forgiveness, apologies are means to an end. But there may be other, much more important ways to achieve that same end. This is so even with apologies when it comes to animals. Animals cannot understand apologies. Instead, we can take extra care in determining how to promote an animal's happiness in the special context of our past wrongs. When I have stepped on a cat's tail, I can pay special attention to whether any lasting injury has come from my wrong.

However, since we also have a duty to *self* to apologise, as a sort of moral exercise, it may even be our duty to issue a verbal apology to animals. As silly as it may sound at frst, apologising to animals is already a common practice. Imagine a person who trips over a black cat in the dark and feels guilty for not having been more careful. It would be a perfectly understandable and reasonable reaction to exclaim "oh no, I'm sorry!" and then check if the cat is hurt and attempt to comfort her. The former is a verbal apology addressed to the animal and the latter is an alternative measure to make up for the wrong in terms of the happiness of the animal. On a frst-personal Kantian view, our practice of apologising to animals is not just an irrational spillover effect from our moral interactions with humans. It can be a perfectly fne example of the fulflment of a duty to self to apologise, based on the duty of moral self-perfection.

Let me sum up. In this chapter I have addressed a major diffculty for Kantians in including animals as moral patients: As Kant sees it, we can only have duties towards beings who share our moral law. This is because, in the view of Kant and many Kantians, our duties only have their bipolar or 'directed' character due to our sharing of the moral law. This view however stands in tension with the fact that, on a traditional Kantian view, the moral law is autonomous and autochthonous. It is not in any straightforward sense 'shared'. In response, Kantians typically try to explain how the moral law is after all shared between Kantian agents. I have suggested the opposite move: Kantians should double down on the commitment that the moral law is *not* shared in any ambitious sense, but rather arises from the individual rational being alone. Instead of trying to account for moral bipolarity in terms of a shared moral law, we should account for it in terms of the *content* of our duties. Duties *towards X* are duties that are *about X* in a certain way. I have spelled out this 'content approach' for duties of virtue: Duties to self are about moral self-perfection, and duties to others are about others' happiness.

Some would object that this approach is blind to an essential part of moral life, namely the part that involves second-personal authority. How could this approach explain, say, an obligee's unique standing to give consent, to forgive a wrongdoer, or to demand apologies? Do we not need to appeal to the obligee's capacity to put us under obligation and free us from obligation? To deal with such examples, I employ the 'defate-anddeny tactic': Defate any given part of moral life to something for which you can account in terms of frst-personal Kantianism, and boldly deny the rest. I have illustrated the tactic on the three examples of consent, forgiveness, and apologies.

I hope to have shown in this chapter what frst-personal Kantianism is, and that it can bring us a crucial step closer to including animals in Kantian moral concern. What remains to be done now is to see how much of Kant's framework we can actually 'translate' onto our treatment of animals if we take the steps proposed so far. That is the task of the next chapter.

#### References

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# Kantian Moral Patients Without Practical Reason?

# 6.1 Duties of Respect Towards Moral Non-agents?

So far, I have suggested a way to understand the Categorical Imperative so that animals are not inherently excluded from moral concern (Chap. 4), and I have proposed an alternative to Kant's view of directionality, according to which there can be duties towards animals (Chap. 5). It would be convenient if we could now simply apply Kant's taxonomy of duties from the *Doctrine of Virtue* to the domain of animals as moral patients. We would effectively have transformed Kant's oeuvre on ethics into an oeuvre on animal ethics. Unfortunately, Kant's tacit (and sometimes not-so-tacit) assumption that all moral patients are fnite rational beings leads to two additional diffculties. First, Kant assumes that all moral agents and patients are subjects of pure practical reason, who are equal in moral potential. This gives rise to a special class of duties—duties of respect—which demand that we do not exalt ourselves above others (MM 6:449.32). More specifcally, duties of respect rule out not only being arrogant or contemptuous towards others, but also being overbearingly benefcent. Thus, duties of respect put a crucial limit on benefcence and put an important qualifer to the demands of duties of love. This gives rise to the characteristically Kantian idea that we should seek the right *balance* or *reconciliation* between benefcence and non-exaltation.

Secondly, as we saw in Chap. 2, Kant's conception of practical love revolves around the idea that others pursue their own happiness as a matter of instrumental rationality. Because others set their ends with an eye to happiness, our best way of promoting their happiness is to support their self-chosen ends. But animals, at least as Kant sees them, are incapable of consciously pursuing their happiness as an end. Indeed, they pursue no 'ends' at all, being entirely steered by blind instinct (CPJ 5:172.10). Thus, Kant's discussion of duties towards others rests on the assumption that others are subjects of both *pure practical reason* and *instrumental practical reason*. In this chapter, I will argue that with some modifcations to the taxonomy, we can accommodate the ideas of duties of respect and of love even towards animals. Considering these duties in more detail also helps to see what our duties towards animals demand according to Kantianism for Animals.

Let me begin with the frst diffculty, which concerns duties of respect. As we have already seen in Chap. 2, Kant describes these duties as a force of "repulsion" (MM 6:470.05), in that they ask us not to encroach upon others. They act as an important counterweight to duties of love, which on their own would simply demand that we beneft others without any limit. The reason why we ought not to encroach upon others is that, in doing so, we would be 'exalting' ourselves above them (see MM 6:449.32). In Kant's view, generosity burdens the benefciary with the expectation of politeness and fattery (*Collins* 27:341f.), putting her on an unequal footing with the benefactor. The very existence of duties of respect is thus predicated, frst, on the assumption of moral equality, and secondly on moral agency and social expectations. But none of this appears to apply to animals, who are neither moral agents nor our moral equals.

As mentioned in Chap. 2, duties of respect present a taxonomical puzzle (Fahmy 2013). Kant categorises them as duties towards others, yet they do not appear to derive from the obligatory end of the happiness of others. Indeed, an important point about these duties is that they *limit* the extent to which we should be benefcent towards others. Kant also categorises duties of respect as duties of virtue, yet they do not appear to prescribe an end we should adopt, only the negative condition (MM 6:449.32; Baron 2002, 399) that we should not exalt ourselves above others in various ways. Whatever the solution to this taxonomical puzzle is, Kant clearly takes the recognition of another's humanity—more importantly, their *equal* humanity!—to give rise to a duty not to exalt ourselves above them.

At frst sight, it is hard to see how something like a Kantian duty of respect towards others could be justifed along the lines of Kantianism for Animals. In this framework, a duty *counts* as a duty 'towards' others if, and only if, it derives from the obligatory end of the happiness of others (see Sect. 5.2 above). Of course, Kantianism for Animals can ask that we do not go so blatantly overboard in our attempts at benefcence that they backfre and make others less happy. But this is less a counterweight to the demands of duties of love than a built-in restriction of benefcence itself. What is more, animals are not our moral equals. They do not stand under a moral law, and they do not share our moral predicament. There simply seems to be no equality to be acknowledged here. So how could there arise a duty to acknowledge equality and not exalt ourselves above them? Do we have to abandon entirely the idea of a reconciliation of love and non-exaltation, of benefcence and recognition of equality?

The answer, I want to suggest, is no. We can preserve a part of the idea that we should not exalt ourselves above others even if those others are animals. We can even preserve the idea that this duty of non-exaltation is connected to the recognition of something like equality. But we need to depart from Kant one more time in order to do so in a way that considers animals. The frst step to the solution is to put the duty of non-exaltation in another part of Kant's taxonomy. In Kantianism for Animals, we should understand this duty not as a duty *towards others*, but as a duty *to self, merely regarding others*. 1 This represents another departure from Kant (though one concerning a point on which, as we have seen, his taxonomy stands in need of clarifcation anyway). Of course, this move is not without a certain irony, given that Kant made the same move the other way around, declaring our most important duties regarding animals to be duties to self. Conversely, in Kantianism for Animals, it is precisely those duties that would appear to hold only towards human beings, in virtue of their equal humanity, that are truly duties to self. If they still appear like duties towards others, that is an amphiboly in moral concepts of refection.

Duties to self, on the conception outlined in Chap. 5, are those which derive from the obligatory end of our own moral perfection. This 'perfection' consists, on the one hand, in keeping ourselves in good moral shape as duty-observers (e.g. by not increasing our inclinations by overindulging in food, drugs, or sexuality, MM 6:427.01–428.26; MM 6:424.09–425.36).

1There is an exception to this claim, namely the duty to beneft others' qualitatively moral happiness. As we saw in Sect. 2.3, Kant acknowledges that there are qualitatively moral sensations, such as pangs of conscience or being morally content with oneself. Not to create such qualitatively moral pains in other human beings can be conceived as a duty directly towards others even according to Kantianism for Animals.

On the other hand, it consists in recognising, and acting in accordance with, proper moral self-esteem. We should not lower ourselves below others with whom we are truly "on a footing of equality" (MM 6:434.04), for instance by being servile (MM 6:434.20–436.13). But it seems perfectly plausible that the end of moral perfection, so understood, also requires that we do not exalt ourselves *above* our equals. In being arrogant, we "expect other human beings to esteem themselves but little in comparison with us" (MM 6:465.12–13). This expectation, just like the converse expectation that others should *not* respect us as potential observers of the moral law, is not appropriate to our equal status as moral agents. So the duty of non-exaltation fts the description of a duty to self in Kant's framework very straightforwardly.

Recategorising the duty of non-exaltation as a duty to self makes sense on another count too: It emphasises how this duty is truly about a form of humility concerning ourselves, as much as it is about other-regarding stances. The duties Kant lists as specifcations—not to be arrogant, not to backbite, not to ridicule others—are fundamentally about the recognition of a *relation* between equals. Another upside of the recategorisation I advocate is that the duty of non-exaltation can still play the role of a counterweight or limiting condition to the demands of duties of love, since in general duties to self and duties to others must be reconciled (see Vogt 2009, 238).

However, it must be said that conceiving of duties of respect as duties to self also presents some apparent problems. First, ordinary moral experience would suggest that we owe it *to others* not to be arrogant towards them or exalt ourselves above them in other ways. Is it not strange to claim that we truly only wrong ourselves by being arrogant? Consider, however, that Kantianism for Animals does not have to claim that *acting* from arrogance in a way that harms others only wrongs ourselves. As soon as the happiness of others is affected, our duties to others give us a foothold for moral criticism. What is at issue here is the duty we violate merely by having an *expectation* that others should view themselves as below us, the *inner* exaltation by which we see ourselves as inherently more worthy than others. That this type of exaltation should violate only a duty to self does not seem so strange.

Secondly, there is the further problem that Kant views only duties of respect as *owed* duties, while duties of love are *meritorious* (see Chap. 2). If we recategorise duties of respect as duties to self, only meritorious duties to others remain. Does that mean that we never owe others anything? This would again appear to confict with ordinary moral experience, where we do seem to owe a certain treatment to others (including animals). However, recall that when Kant calls a duty 'meritorious', he does not mean to say it is not a duty. Others can morally object to our failure to observe meritorious duties, and those most affected by our failings are often in the best position to point them out. So, importantly, the meritorious is not the supererogatory. Kant draws the owed-meritorious distinction mainly by appeal to whether observance of a duty puts the other under a reciprocal obligation (say, to be grateful). But we should not expect this to be a very important distinction in an ethical system designed to capture duties towards animals, who can never acquire obligations anyway.

When it comes to capturing the ordinary experience of feeling like we 'owe' another some treatment, we are better served by a perfect-imperfect distinction than Kant's owed-meritorious distinction. This perfectimperfect distinction applies to our duties of love towards others as much as to our duties to self. What we 'owe' others is what anyone could expect us to do, a duty which we can have no good reason *not* to observe. That is a feature characteristic of perfect duties, which we can observe in every single instance. Imperfect duties, by contrast, are those that require a choice concerning when and how to observe them. Although anyone could expect us to observe our imperfect duties at some point in some way, there can be good reasons in terms of other (perfect or imperfect) duties that keep us from observing them in any particular instance. Now, since duties of virtue according to Kant prescribe the adoption of a certain end, they are always 'wide' and can get in each other's way. However, to every duty of virtue there correspond 'vices'—stances such as arrogance or contempt, which run counter to the observance of our duties. While the positive duty to adopt a certain end is never truly perfect, the duty *not* to adopt and act on a contravening vice is perfect. Even if we cannot always, without restriction, adopt an end of benefcence or sympathetic participation, we *can* always *not* take pleasure in another's misfortune. To capture the feeling of owing others something, we should appeal to such a perfectimperfect distinction as it applies to our duties of love and their corresponding vices.

Assuming that what Kant calls 'duties of respect' can be recategorised as duties to self, there remains the problem that these duties hinge on the recognition of moral equality. The reason why we should not go overboard in our generosity is that generosity puts the benefciary under duties and expectations of gratitude, lowering their status vis à vis the benefactor. Neither are animals our moral equals, nor is there an expectation that animals should be grateful for any benefts they receive from human beings.

However, even though expectations of gratitude play no role in our moral relations to animals, there can still be a duty on our part not to exalt ourselves over them, neither in the sense of taking an arrogant or contemptuous stance towards them, nor in the sense of going overboard in our benefcence out of delusions of grandeur. Granted, we can have no Kantian duty to recognise, and act in accordance with, the moral equality of beings who are not our moral equals. But why should there not instead be a duty to recognise, and act in accordance with, the fundamental moral *incomparability* of a being capable, and one incapable, of morality? The moral inequality between human beings and animals, as Cholbi has pointed out (2014, 348), lies not just in the fact that animals lack the potential for moral *goodness*, but also in that they lack the *propensity to evil*. Not standing under a moral law, they can be neither good nor bad when they go about their actions. Hence, they are neither morally better nor morally worse than human beings. But we fail to act in accordance with this fundamental moral inequality when we view animals as *morally worse* or *less deserving of their happiness* or *less important qua moral patients* than human beings. So we have a Kantian duty not to exalt ourselves above animals, at least not in any sense that would have us view ourselves as 'more worthy' of our happiness than they are of theirs (for, in contrast to human beings, they do not *need* to be worthy of their happiness). Kant's egalitarianism—the injunction not to exalt ourselves above others and hence not to be overbearingly benefcent upon them—can be drawn from the fundamental *inequality* between moral agents and non-agents, as much as from the fundamental *equality* between moral agents.