From For the Love of Metaphysics: Nihilism and the Conflict of Reason From Kant to Rosenzweig (Oxford University Press) by Karin Nisenbaum, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
For the moment, I want to mention some of the other features of a perfectionist outlook that I believe are instantiated in the Ages of the World [by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling], features that both clarify what it means to fail to act morally and show that Moral Perfectionism is not an outlook concerned only with the person’s own development, but also with the place of other persons in moral judgment.
Professor Karin Nisenbaum
Central to the perfectionist outlook is the view that the process of individuation is one whereby “the self is always attained, as well as to be attained;” the self is always beside itself, yet in such a way that “each state of the self is, so to speak, final.” Thus, the perfectionist author impels us beyond the fixation of our present desires toward a higher, further state of our own self, but he also prevents us from falling into a form of moral despair, by regarding each state of the self as always attained, as well as to be attained.
If we keep in mind that Schelling conceives “the jointure of Being” as the distinction of ground and existence, and if we keep in mind that, in Schelling’s view, each being emerges from itself, and in emerging, reveals itself, we can see that moral failure can take one of two forms: becoming fixated on our sensuous nature so that we are no longer “attracted” to our soul’s journey, or regarding with contempt the ground of our own existence, instead of regarding it as the condition that enables us to ascend toward a higher, further state of our own self.
As Andrew Bowie observes:
The activity of ‘reason,’ which in itself initially depends upon the ground, can become the (ultimately futile) attempt to overcome that in which it is grounded … Schelling’s argument can surely be read, though, as a warning against the potential for domination of subjectivity, which as ‘evil’ tries to obliterate its relationship to the ground upon which it is dependent.
Indeed, even in [Imanuel] Kant’s view, pure practical reason only “restricts self-love,” a form of self-regard that Kant believes is naturally active in each of us.
For example, in the second Critique, Kant claims that “to be happy is necessarily the demand of every rational but finite being and therefore an unavoidable determining ground of its faculty of desire,” and in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, he notes that the claim that personal happiness is good naturally arises from self-love: “To incorporate [self-love] into one’s maxim is natural … for us-dependent as we are on objects of the senses, happiness is by nature the first that we desire and desire unconditionally.”
Moral failure can take one of two forms: becoming fixated on our sensuous nature … or regarding with contempt the ground of our own existence, instead of regarding it as the condition that enables us to ascend toward a higher, further state of our own self.
Thus, in Kant’s view, the claim that the end of personal happiness is good can “remain” as the “matter of the maxim” of our will, but in the case of a virtuous will, that matter is “limited” or given the form of a law. This is how Kant describes what follows from giving the claim that the end of personal happiness is good the form of a universal law:
Let the matter be, for example, my own happiness. This, if I attribute it to each (as, in the case of finite beings, I may in fact do), can become an objective practical law only if I include in it the happiness of others. Thus the law to promote the happiness of others arises … merely from this: that the form of universality, which reason requires as the condition of giving to a maxim of self-love the objective validity of a law, becomes the determining ground of the pure will.
When the maxim of self-love (the claim that the end of personal happiness is good) is given the form of a universal law, what follows is the duty of beneficence, the obligation to promote the happiness of others, and in doing so, to recognize the value of the ends that others pursue, to recognize that they too participate in determining the concept of the good (or at least to recognize that other virtuous agents participate in determining the concept of the good).
Also, if the claim that one’s own happiness is good is rendered objective by being transformed into a universal law, then others should be prepared to recognize the value of the ends that we pursue; others should be prepared to recognize our own valid contribution to determining the concept of the good. In this way, the moral law becomes the “basis of a definition of the good that can be universally and intersubjectively agreed upon.” When the claims of self-love are given the form of a universal law, they become rational; there is a sufficient reason to realize those ends, and those claims enable us to determine the concept of the good.
When the maxim of self-love (the claim that the end of personal happiness is good) is given the form of a universal law, what follows is the duty of beneficence.
Thus, from within a perfectionist outlook, moral failure occurs when a person takes up too much or too little of the space among other persons that belongs to her. As [Stanley] Cavell remarks, the Emersonian, or democratic, version of perfectionism moves from the idea “of there being one (call him Socrates) who represents for each of us the height of the journey, to the idea of each of us being representative for each of us — an idea that is a threat as much as an opportunity.”
A person can fail to regard her own life as being representative for each of us in one of two ways: I have claimed that being a self involves giving our beliefs and actions the form of a coherent whole, and I have argued that this practice is the means by which the self and cognizes the good. Yet if a person fails to take her own life seriously enough — by not being committed to her ongoing project or form of life, or by failing to take responsibility for the values that she endorses in living — she will be unable to say that her life contributes toward cognizing the good, for in living she makes no claims about the ends that are and are not worthy of commitment.
In Cavell’s terms, such a person will be unable to say, “I stand here for humanity.” Yet, a person can also fail to regard her own life as representative for each of us by considering her own life — and the values that she endorses in living — to be the only adequate representation of humanity. In Kantian terms, this is what occurs when self-love turns into self-conceit, when self-love “makes itself lawgiving and the unconditional practical principle.”