Kant on emotions and Williams’ criticism

Abstract

Bernard Williams blames Kant’s morality for a crucial flaw in contemporary ethics. In Problems of the Self, he claims that British philosophers limit themselves to acknowledging emotions as a potentially destructive component for morality and consistency.1 In opposition to it, he struggles to dismiss several Kantian views about emotions, such as the one according to which emotions are supposed to be only a product of natural causation, as well as too capricious and passively experienced. I shall show that Kant has a place for emotions in his moral theory. However, he asserts that we can act morally without any sensible incentive. I show that Williams and Kant have different models concerning moral motivation and that Kant does not agree with Williams’ claim that “Only motivations motivate”, since moral law could trigger a moral action without any sensible motive.