Abstract:

“The only objects of a practical reason are…those of the good and the evil. For by the first is understood a necessary object of the faculty of desire, by the second, of the faculty of aversion, both, however, in accordance with a principle of reason.” [KPrV 5:58]

John Rawls, referring to such passages, observed that Kant’s ethics exhibits “the priority of the right over the good”, and that this “is a central feature” of his ethics. If this passage supports Rawls’ observation, then the priority is exhibited in the priority of practical reason over the good. Being the object of practical reason—being rationally willed (desired, etc.)—in some sense is explains why something is good. This assumes that rationality is, roughly, something that is at to be identified with the right (say, as rule-, principle-, or law-bound). This is by no means the only way to read such passages. And whether or not Kant defended the priority of the right is a complicated and perhaps whiggish question. Despite these interpretive challenges, I think it is nevertheless of interest to identify which elements of Kant’s views appear to fall under a banner of the priority of the right over the good, and, more importantly, to understand why. The priority of the right is not one thing in Kant’s ethics, but a family of related ideas. The problem most associated with the priority of the right is that it seems to require irrationality when there is a better alternative than what is right. I argue if there is a problem in Kant’s ethics, it is not the priority of the right, but his theory of the good.