Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

1
Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition1

1.

Empty Formalism and Modern Moral Philosophy

It is now hard to imagine how unpromising the lines of thought in this book
seemed to most people with an interest in philosophical ethics when I first
worked on them in the late 1960s. Many were then still drawn to more-orless positivist claims that reasoned approaches to ethical or political claims were
impossible, while those who favoured a reasoned approach
usually
proposed
some version of ethical naturalism, mostly of a Utilitarian or
Aristotelian variety. There was general agreement that Kants claim that
practical reason can guide ethical action was wholly implausible. Although
Kants ethical and political philosophy had enjoyed considerable resonance in
the wider world during the post war decades, that can be detected in
the
drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European
Convention on Human Rights, and of the West German and other constitutions,
it had few admirers in Anglophone philosophy departments.
This was not because philosophers at that time had no interest in or respect for
Kants wider philosophy. Many admired both his metaphysical caution and
the sweep of his arguments about human knowledge and its limits. But the
consensus was that he neither showed how principles could guide action nor
offered adequate reasons for any specific ethical or political principles, so that
both his metaethics and his normative ethics were defective.
These criticisms were not new. They date back to the early days of German
Idealism, and in particular to Hegels critique of the empty formalism of
1

Acting on Principle grew out of my Ph D dissertation at Harvard, which was supervised

by John Rawls and submitted at the end of 1968 under the title Universalisability. The book
was published by Columbia University Press in 1975 under my then married name, Onora
Nell, and has been unavailable for many years. I am grateful to Columbia University Press
for reverting the copyright to me, and to Cambridge University Press and their readers for
encouraging me to think that it should be made available again. This edition contains the
original bibliography, a selected bibliography of subsequent work on its themes, and a
bibliography of my later work on Kant and Kantian themes. References to my own work in
the footnotes to this introductory essay provide only titles and year of publication; full
details are given in the third bibliography.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

Kants ethics. 2 In the English speaking world less acerbic but substantively
similar criticisms of the core of Kants ethics had been made by J.S. Mill in
Utilitarianism, where he wrote
I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of
the most illustrious of them, the Metaphysics of Ethics, by Kant. This
remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the
landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the treatise
in question, lay down a universal first principle as the origin and ground
of moral obligation; it is this: So act, that the rule on which thou actest
would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational beings. But when
he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality,
he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any
contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the
adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of
conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption
would be such as no one would choose to incur.3
Curiously, the persistent charge that Kants ethics is no more than empty
formalism that prescribes nothing determinate was repeatedly coupled with an
incompatible allegation that it prescribes with rigid insensitivity, so can take
no account of varying circumstances. 4
Some prominent philosophers of the early post war period were even more
dismissive than Hegel.
G.E.M. Anscombe, my tutor in Oxford in the
early 60s, published an influential paper titled Modern Moral Philosophy
in 1958.5 In it she argued that both Kant and the Utilitarians take an
inadequate view of action, fail to understand that acts fall under many
descriptions,
consequently do not realise that principles cannot guide
2

G.W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 135 "Kants criterion of non-contradiction is

productive of nothing, since where there is nothing, there can be no contradiction either.
3

J. S. Mill Utilitarianism, ch 1.

The charges of formalism and rigourism are incompatible because an ethical position
that is wholly indeterminate prescribes nothing, so will not prescribe with rigid
insensitivity to circumstances. The persistent combination of these incompatible criticisms
of Kants ethics is hard to understand. It may be that formalism is seen as
a defect in his
metaethics, and rigourism as a defect in his normative ethicsbut if his metaethics indeed
has no bite, it can hardly establish normative claims that can be criticised for their
rigourism.
5

G. E. M. Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy, Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E.

M. Anscombe, Vol III, Ethics, Religion and Politics, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 26. Her
influence has been most evident in virtue ethics, but in my opinion runs far wider.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

action. Attempts to create an ethics of principles are doomed to fail. She wrote
of Kant that:
... it never occurred to him that a lie could be relevantly described as
anything but just a lie...His rule about universalisable maxims is useless
without stipulations as to what shall count with a view to constructing a
maxim about it
Anscombe levelled the same charges against Utilitarianism:
Mill, like Kant, fails to realise the necessity for stipulation of relevant
descriptions, if his theory is to have content. It did not occur to him that
acts of murder and theft could be otherwise described. He holds that
where a proposed action is of such a kind as to fall under some one
principle established on grounds of utility, one must go by that. 6
She concluded that both Kantian and Utilitarian ethics the two most
prominent strands of
modern moral philosophy fail for the same
reasons. At times I have wondered why, given that I was aware of these
powerful lines of thought when I began working on Acting on Principle, I
thought it worth going back to Kants ethics.

2. Back to Kant
I suspect that a central reason why I chose to swim against the tide was less that
I was initially
drawn to Kants practical philosophy, and more that I had
become disillusioned with contemporary accounts of reasoning about action.
As a graduate student at Harvard in the late 1960s I joined a small but intense
seminar given by Robert Nozick, which worked through Games and
Decisions by R.D. Luce and H. Raiffa. 7 At first I was beguiled by the
neatness of models of rational choice, and their seemingly manageable
accounts of reasoning about action. But after a few months I concluded that
these approaches to practical reason fail, and that their supposed ethical
implications were illusory. The simplistic assumption that we can
exhaustively list the options that agents face seemed open to the very
worries about relevant descriptions that lie behind Anscombes criticism of
Utilitarian and Kantian ethics. Even if we could do so, any claim that we can
establish that some option is optimal seemed to me to rely on metric,
epistemic and other fictions. To my initial disappointment, I concluded that
6

Page no
R. D. Luce and H. Raiffa, Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey, John
Wiley and Sons, 1957.
7

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

sophisticated work on consequentialist practical reasoning too was
fractured by metaethical failings and normative deficiencies, which were
cumulatively even more recalcitrant than those Anscombe detected in all
modern moral philosophy.
In rebounding from this brief enthusiasm for models of rational choice and
consequentialist ethics, I optimistically turned initially to some mid-twentieth
century writers who approached ethical reasoning with an explicit focus
on more formal constraints on principles of action, and in particular to
those who argued that some form of universalism was the hallmark of
justifiable ethical principles. I looked at the writings of R.M. Hare, G. M.
Singer and Kurt Baier, but failed to find a convincing account of practical
reasoning in their work. 8
Only then did I begin to think about
Kants practical philosophy with
more care. For this I was adequately, but not wholly, prepared. Although my
German was fluent, I was neither attracted by the prospect of total immersion in
Kants writings, nor inclined to give priority to scholarship over argument. But
at least I had by then read central parts of the Kantian corpus, and after
my rebound from rational choice theory was prepared to take them
seriously.
At Phillipa Foots suggestion I had worked through The Groundwork of the
Metaphysic of Morals
with some care as an undergraduate (Anscombe
preferred to leave the chore of teaching Kant to her colleague at
Somerville). Later, as a graduate student at Harvard, I had read The Critique of
Pure Reason under Charles Parsons, who sparked my interest in Doctrine of
Method, to which I returned when I began to think more systematically about
Kants account of reason. And as Stanley Cavells teaching assistant I had
scurried to grasp some of the implications of Religion within the Limits of
Mere Reason.
Above all when John Rawls agreed to supervise my thesis I had the good
fortune to start working under a philosopher who thought about and lectured
on Kants practical philosophy across his entire teaching career. Rawls later
described his own political philosophy (still mostly unpublished when I began
to work with him) as carrying to a higher level of abstraction the familiar
theory of the social contract as found in Locke, Rousseau and Kant 9 and
8

This ground clearing work formed part of my Harvard Ph D, but much of it was
excluded from Acting on Principle.
9

In A Theory of Justice Rawls described his work not as Kantian, but as Contractarian.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

some of its later versions
Constructivism.

explicitly as a form of Kantian

However, while Rawlss transformative influence on political philosophy is a

matter of common knowledge, his work on Kants practical philosophy and
more broadly on the history of philosophy was not widely appreciated during
his lifetime. His lectures on the history of ethics and political philosophy,
including those on Kants ethics, were published only after the millennium. 10
It is now abundantly clear that Rawlss political philosophy grew out of a
profound engagement not only with its history, but also with the wider history
of ethics, and in particular with Kants practical philosophy. He combined a
deep knowledge of the writings of his predecessors, with a commitment to
make as much sense as he could of their work. This approach has had a wide
and in my view beneficial influence on subsequent work and in particular on
explorations of Kants practical philosophy. 11 It is no exaggeration to say
that Rawlss teaching of Kants practical philosophy transformed the subject as
much as his work on justice transformed political philosophy.
It was also my good fortune that at the time at which I began to work on
Kants practical philosophy
better editions and translations of some (but by
no means all) of Kants writings in ethics and politics, as well as some
distinguished commentaries, were becoming more readily available, in
particular those by H.J. Paton and L. W. Beck. However, the mammoth
enterprise that became the new Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel
Kant was planned only in the 1980s, and publication of its successive volumes
began in the 1990s. Consequently the citations of Kants writings in Acting
on Principle cite older editions and translations, while those in this introductory
essay refer to the Cambridge translations. 12
This is only one respect in which the work has dated. Others reflect both
wider cultural changes and changing philosophical fashion. I would not now
write as if the masculine pronoun could do general duty for points that are not
10

John Rawls, Lectures in the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. Barbara Herman, Harvard
University Press, 2000, and John Rawls, Lectures in the History of Political Philosophy, ed.
Samuel Freeman, Harvard University Press, 2007.
11

Rawlss wider influence on the history of ethics is the theme of Reclaiming the History
of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls, ed. Barbara Herman, Christine Korsgaard and Andrews
Reath, Cambridge University Press, 1997, which includes essays on Kants ethics by other
former pupils, including Susan Neiman, Adrian Piper, Nancy Sherman, Thomas Pogge as
well as the editors and myself.
12

More detail?

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

gender specific. 13 Nor, I think, would I now take quite so austere and formal an
approach to discussing the structure of maxims as I then did, although I can
still see its advantages.

3. Principles and Acts

My central contention in Acting on Principle was that, despite its spare
formality, the Categorical Imperative could be action guiding: a spare and
formal approach to ethics could be fertile and practical. This was a bold as well
as an unpopular claim, and I bracketed several closely connected topics in
order to focus on essentials.
In particular, I discussed only the
Formula of Universal Law (FUL)
formulation of the Categorical Imperative act only on that maxim through
which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law
and virtually ignored other formulations.14 I also set aside questions about
the justification of the Categorical Imperative, and its claims to count as the
supreme principle of practical reason (a topic that I began to work on in
earnest in the mid 1980s). My hope, which no doubt seemed rash enough to
others, was simply to show that despite its formality the Categorical Imperative
could guide action in at least some ethically significance respects. However,
I left open many questions about the extent to which it could guide
action, about its justification and about
the further reaches of Kants
practical philosophy, including his writings on politics, history and religion.
Bracketing these important topics allowed me to concentrate on the relation
between principles and action, and on the ethical implications of the
Categorical Imperative. Looking back at the approach I took, I realise that,
despite my reservations about Anscombes conclusions and her view of
principles, I had been deeply influenced by
her discussions of act
descriptions and their pivotal role in thinking about action. I too saw
principles and the act descriptions they contain as guiding action by shaping
13

However, from time to time I have been comforted for this failure to anticipate the
Zeitgeist by appreciative comments on my supposed prescience in insisting that the fertility
of ethical theoriestheir normative potentialmatters.
14
Since this was the most formal version of the Categorical Imperative, it seemed the best
test case for a claim that a formal criterion can guide action. Later I argued for a reading
of the several formulations of the Categorical Imperative that supports Kants claim that
they are equivalent (G 436). See Consistency in Action 1985; reprinted in Constructions
of Reason .

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

or forming it, so as formal rather than efficient causes of action. In Acting
on Principle I did not address the difficult issues this raises for an account of
freedom of action. Only later did I work on Kants efforts to reconcile natural
necessity with human freedom, and propose a way of understanding Kants
claims that the standpoints of nature and freedom are both indispensable, but
that neither can be reduced to the other.15 In the meantime I rejected
Anscombes claim that the plurality of descriptions true of any given act
creates
intractable problems for any ethics of principles.
Anscombe moved from the thought that acts can be described in many ways
surely incontrovertibleto a claim that principles cannot be action guiding
because many principles will apply to any particular act. This inference
seemed to me mistaken, and I have not revised this view. In practical
reasoning we aim to instantiate or enact practical principles and the act
descriptions they incorporate, rather than to apply principles and the
descriptions they incorporate to already existing instances or cases, as we do
in
theoretical (including empirical) reasoning. Practical reasoning,
including ethical reasoning, is not a spectator sport. In practical
reasoning whether ethical or technical, legal or politicalwe aim first to
justify principles, and then to enact or instantiate them in actual situations: the
particularity of enactments is necessarily subsequent to action, so neither
can nor needs to be presupposed. If we can justify principles, there will no
doubt be situations in which it is taxing, or even
impossible, to enact or
instantiate all of the principles that we have reason to take seriously as well as
we would hope to. But this is not because particular acts can be relevantly
described in multiple ways, but because some situations make it difficult or
even impossible to act on certain principles or combinations of principles.
So I
agreed with Anscombe that principles cannot be fully determinate,
but took issue with her conclusion that this indeterminacy means that their
point as guides to action would be lost.16
The Categorical Imperative is meant to offer a criterion for rejecting or
accepting ethical principles, and thereby a first move in seeking to act in
ethically acceptable ways.
If the criterion is satisfactory, we may be able
to use it to distinguish act types that are ethically required from those that are
not required and those that are ethically permitted from those that are
prohibited. But neither the justification of principles nor the judgements we
make in enacting them require agents to subsume acts that have not yet been
done under principles, or to review all possible descriptions of not yet
15

See Reason and Autonomy in Grundlegung III, in Constructions of Reason.

16

See Acting On Principle p. 11.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

existing act-tokens. The supposed problem of relevant descriptions can indeed
arise in theoretical, including empirical, judgements of already existing
situations and problems. But it does not arise in practical judgment, where the
relevant act is yet to be performed, so is not there to be judged. In Acting on
Principle I argued in the final chapter that contexts of action were primary and
contexts of assessment secondary. 17

4. Maxims
Kant sees the Categorical Imperative as a second-order principle that agents
can use to work out the ethical status of possible substantive principles of
action. Such principles can be adopted or rejected as maxims by agents at or
through particular times. 18 The notion of a maxim is pivotal to Kants
account of the relation between principles and acts. Maxims have
propositional form and structure, so are apt for reasoning, including the
reasoning enjoined by the Categorical Imperative; maxims also articulate
standards that
can be used to shape action, so are apt for practical
purposes.
In Acting on Principle I concluded, I now think too baldly, that if maxims
are principles with propositional content that belong to agents at or through
particular times , they are best thought of as agents intentions. 19 It is true both
that intentions have propositional structure and content, so are apt for
reasoning, and that they are
states of agents at or through certain times,
so may be apt for practical purposes.
In construing maxims as intentions
I was saying nothing very new: the long tradition that reads Kants ethics as a
philosophy of the subject, and the long running criticism that his ethics is too
individualistic, both commonly construe maxims as intentions.
Yet it is not obvious, either textually or systematically, that
maxims can be
equated specifically with intentions, and I noted repeatedly that if maxims are
to be seen as intentions, we must stretch our understanding of intentions.
17

I returned to these issues in The Power of Example, 1986; in Instituting Principles:

Between Duty and Action, 1997 revised version 2002, and most recently in Applied Ethics:
Naturalism, Normativity and Public Policy, 2009.
18

Kant characterises maxims as subjective principles, meaning that they are the
principles of subjects or agents (G 4:421n) at or through some time, but does not regard them
as invariably epistemically subjective as opposed to objectivea thought that would have
been incompatible with his view of ethics.
19

AoP 13,35

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

Kant uses the term maxim to cover both agents intentions in acting and their
intentions for the future, both their intentions to do specified acts and their
intentions to pursue specified ends or objectives. He also holds that agents
may be unaware of the maxims on which they act, that they may act on
multiple maxims, and that many of the highly specific intentions of daily life do
not count as maxims. I mentioned, but did not fully explore, other respects
in which Kants notion of a maxim diverges from and is broader than many
conceptions of intentions, and returned to the topic only at a later point
when othersin particular Rdiger Bittner and Otfried Hffe had
investigated it. 20 Only much later did I appreciate the implications of
Kants constant emphasis on the limits of self knowledge, so are opaque rather
than transparent to ourselves?
When I returned to consider these matters, I realised that there were other
ways to construe maxims, which do not identify them with agents
intentions. One approach was to think of maxims as ascribed to agents, in the
way that revealed preference models of rationality ascribe preferences to
agents on the basis of assumptions about their preference orderings and
evidence of what they do. An ascriptive view of maxims readily allows for
the thought that agents need not be aware of their maximsbut at the cost of
uncoupling maxims from practical reasoning, shifting to a third party
perspective on action and counting all the principles that a pattern of action
satisfies as maxims.
However, Kant insists that maxims are determinations of the will: they not
merely have propositional form and content, but are directed at action. To
adopt a maxim is not just to entertain or propose or imagine doing some type
of act, or pursuing some type of end. Nor is it merely a matter of wishing or
desiring to do some type of act or to pursue some type of end. Agents who
adopt maxims thereby commit themselves to select some adequate means to
enact their maxims when suitable circumstances arise, and to
the normal
and predictable consequences of acting on those maxims. Commitments to
action are not a matter of wish, but of will: in adopting maxims
agents
commit themselves to taking adequate means and acknowledging the
predictable results of acting on those maxims, should occasion arise. These
links are central to all practical reasoning, and crucial to understanding how the
Categorical Imperative can be deployed.
20

See inter alia Bittner, Rdiger, 'Maximen', in G. Funke, ed., Akten des 4. Internationalen
Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter, Berlin, 1974, 485-9; Herman, Barbara, The Practice of Moral
Judgement, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993; Timmermann, Jens Kants
Puzzling Ethics of Maxims , Harvard Review , 4, 2000, 38-52.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

All of this could, I now think, have been said more perspicuously by accepting
that Kants maxims are not best construed specifically as intentions, and by
viewing them simply as the practical principles that may be adopted by
agents at or through various times, and are apt both for reasoning and for
practical purposes. This approach would have allowed for a quite general
articulation of the role of maxims in practical reasoning. 21 It would also
have provided a more perspicuous and useful context for understanding
Kants repeated insistence on the
limits of human self knowledge, and a
vantage point for addressing the temptation to think of Kants ethics as
markedly individualistic. In Acting on Principle I repeatedly addressed these
questions but did not, as I now see matters, reach a fully satisfactory view
either of the texts or of the arguments.

5. Duties First
Notoriously Kants substantive ethics is not merely an ethics of principles, but
specifically an ethics of principles of duty. Criticism of the very idea of an
ethics of duty was a major and persistent theme of
twentieth century
European culture and philosophy. Many writers held that duty offers a
narrow, unappealing, even defective and corrupting way of thinking about
human life and ethical questions, and that it should be discarded in the
dustbin of history. Among philosophers a focus on duty was often thought
to lead a view of ethics that is insensitive to the variety of situations and
circumstances (rigourism again!) , blind to the importance of character and
virtue,22 excessively preoccupied with matters of blame, 23 or too narrowly
focused on action that others can claim as a matter of right. Very often
these lines of criticism were combined. Towards the end of the twentieth
century, as political and philosophical discussions of what ought to be done
21

I compared the merits of these ways of construing maxims in Kant's Virtues, 1996.

22

Criticisms of Kants supposed rigourism and of his supposed neglect of virtue and
character recur in all varieties of virtue ethics, and have been repeatedly rebutted in work
on Kantian ethics in the last 30 years.
23

This more Nietzschean worry was less common. It was put forward perspicuously by
Bernard Williams, who argued that those who make duties central to moral life are
obsessed by reactive attitudes to others wrongdoing, typically attitudes of blame, which
he dubs the characteristic reaction of the morality system. He concludes that if we are
to reject a culture of blame we must reject conceptions of morality that centre on duties.
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, London: Fontana, 1985, 177.

10

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

increasingly invoked claims about human rights, a focus on duty was also
sometimes accused (wrongly, in my view) of prioritising agents over those
whom their action affects. 24
In Acting on Principle I approached these questions about the scope and aims
of normative ethics
by setting out a reading of Kants classification of
duties and arguing that it offered a more perspicuous view of a wider range of
ethical considerations than was often supposed. In all his ethical writings, but
most explicitly in the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant seeks to justify both duties
to perform acts of specific typesduties of right (some of them specifically
duties of justice) and duties to pursue ends of certain types, which he sees as
duties of virtue.
He variously characterises the former duties as perfect,
strict or narrow, and the latter as imperfect or wide. Kants alleged neglect of
the virtues seemingly reflected a highly selective reading of his work.
On Kants account, perfect duties require or prohibit types of act. Many
perfect duties require or prohibit external acts or omissions that can be
enforced by others (for example, by states). However, other perfect duties
require or prohibit types of act that cannot be enforced by others (for example,
duties to refrain from mockery or self abasement, which Kant classifies as
ethical duties of omission)). Here enforcement by others fails because
enforcers cannot target the inward aspects of action that matter in such cases.
Imperfect duties too cannot be enforced by others, but for entirely different
reasons. In this case the impossibility of enforcement arises immediately from
the fact that required or prohibited acts are not sufficiently specified, so that
ways of enacting principles must be selected in context. Duties to seek
specific ends cannot lay down which ways of enacting them may be available or
effective for particular cases. Consequently Kant claims that beneficence is an
overarching principle for imperfect duties to others, but that it is not
possible to lay down in advance which specific helpful acts are required or
whose happiness should be fostered in specific situations. Least of all can
beneficence
require agents to perform all the helpful acts that may
severally be available to them.
Imperfect duties require agents to adopt
24

See for example Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 2008. I think the focus mistaken because many rights cannot be claimed
unless specific others hold duties. In the case of liberty rights all others must hold the
counterpart duties, in the case of rights to goods and services specifiable others must hold
them. See Children's Rights and Children's Lives, 1988; Women's Rights: Whose
Obligations? 1996; The Dark Side of Human Rights, 2005.

11

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

certain types of end or policy, but underdetermine the choice of occasions and
means of pursuing
them.
Equally, Kants overarching principle for imperfect duties to self, the duty
to develop ones potential (hence duties of self development or self perfection),
also cannot be parsed as a determinate duty to develop particular capacities
to some prescribed level, but only as an indeterminate duty to cultivate powers
of mind and body that fit one to pursue the variety of aims one may have
reason to adopt.25 However, as Kant sees it, neither the pursuit of ones
own happiness nor the development human potential in others is a matter
of duty. Our own happiness is not a matter of duty because we are
naturally inclined to pursue it; the development of others potential is not a
matter of duty because (less plausibly) this is not a task for others.
By
the standards of today, my discussion of these topics was
less than
complete, but fortunately others have since been more patient and done far
more to articulate the details of Kants account of the virtues. 26
In subsequent writing I repeatedly returned to these central Kantian themes.
Sometimes I took an explicitly Kantian approach; at other times I spared
readers the trek through textual details and tried to reach wider audiences. I
argued in many contexts that rights cannot be prior to the duties, and that to
assume otherwise is usually a matter of mere
assertion or declaration rather
than argument.
I also argued that adequate ethical theories must provide
an account of indeterminate ethical requirementsimperfect duties and
that theories that offer an account only of action to which others can lay
rightful claim are not merely incomplete, but morally inadequate.
I continue
to think that good character is not optional, but a matter of (imperfect) duty. 27
This remains an unpopular position. It seemingly invites criticisms both from
virtue ethicists, who think that it does not take virtue or
good character
seriously enough, and from theorists of justice, who often deny that

25

MS 6 392 wrongly footnoted as 391 at A on P 89

26

See Mark Timmons, ed., Kants Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, Oxford
University Press, 2002 ; Denis Lara, ed, Kants Metaphysics of Morals, CUP, 2010; and
Andreas Trampota, Oliver Sensen and Jens Timmermann, eds., Kant's Tugendlehre: A
Comprehensive Commentary, de Gruyter, .
27

Over the years I have probably spent more time writing on these issues than on any
others. The closest to a unitary treatment is Towards Justice and Virtue: A constructive
account of practical reasoning, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

perfect duties are more fundamental than rights, and doubt whether anything
can be said about imperfect duties or about virtue. 28

6. Instrumental Rationality and Universalism

If the Categorical Imperative is to offer a test for the ethical status of maxims,
it must do more than articulate generic standards for practical reasoning; but
equally it cannot ignore those generic standards. Practical reasoning of all
types includes instrumental and consequential reasoning, but even taken
together they are insufficient for reasoned ethical claims. Kant notes that
instrumental reasoning yields definite conclusions only if combined with
other claims about what matters morally, for which no adequate reasons can
be given. Ethical systems they appeal to, the satisfaction of desire, the
demands of Church or State, the metaphysics of perfectionism, or the tyranny
of the majority or other extraneous standards rely on arbitrary assumptions and,
as he sees it, can reach only heteronomous, partially unreasoned accounts of
ethics. Reasoned ethical conclusions need more than
instrumental
rationality.
This conclusion does not mean that ethical reasoning can ignore instrumental
rationality. Like other forms of practical reasoning, ethical reasoning is
not merely about wishing for certain things, but about commitment,
determination, willing, and in this case specifically about commitments,
determinations and willings to change the world (in some small part) to fit the
demands of ethical reasoning. Kants good will is not a matter of merely
wishing things to go well, but of seeking to take effective means to make them
go well when the situation allows. Two standards will be generically
required in all practical reasoning. The first is a commitment to take some
adequate means to enact ones maxims if and when circumstances allow; the
second is a commitment to see any normal, predictable results of acting on
that maxim as ones own doing. Although I did not then label these
commitments respectively instrumental and consequential, these labels are
apt, and both are part and parcel not only of ethical but of other forms of
practical reasoning.
Equally clearly, instrumental and consequential rationality are not sufficient for
ethical reasoning. Kants further and distinctive claim is that ethical
28

The latter is the central tenet of so-called political liberalism: a position that John Rawls
took up in his later work when he queried more comprehensive forms of liberalism. Political
Liberalism denies that we can say anything reasoned about the wider good for man, about
virtue, or about ethical matters other than justice.

13

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

principles must be principles that can be willed as universal laws. He
14
suggests that we can make the idea of willing a principle as a universal law
vivid by thinking of ourselves as acting in a world in which everyone acts
on the same principle, which can then be considered as if it were a natural law.29
This simple thought experiment reveals that, given the generic commitments to
instrumental and consequential rationality, certain rather tempting practical
principles cannot be willed as universal laws. Anybody who seeks to act on
principles that can serve for all must reject these principles of action. Anyone
who adopts such principles rejects universalism.
In Acting on Principle I tried to provide a systematic and lightly formalised
reading of Kants approach, but examples can make the central points more
intuitive. If I try to conceive of a possible world in which all adopt
maxims of deception or betrayal, the thought experiment
undermines
the very trust needed for my own proposed deception or betrayal.
In such a world, acts and
practices that support trust will
wither or
collapse, undermining the possibility of taking advantage of that trust by
deception or betrayal. Analogously, if I try to conceive of a possible world in
which all adopt maxims of destruction or coercion, the thought experiment
undermines the forms of interaction and trust that
my own proposed
deception or betrayal requires. The general point illustrated here is that
these principles cannot be universalised in any possible world, because in
such cases individuals instrumental reasoning
conflicts with the
consequential reasoning to which universal action on that very
maxim
would point. Some entirely coherent maxims
cannot be willed as universal
laws. This conclusion was sufficient to show that the Categorical Imperative is
no empty formalism, and to establish a link between Kants metaethics and his
normative ethics.
It is easier to see how these types of argument work than it is to understand why
Kant presents them as the key to ethical reasoning. One way of making the
underlying thought more intuitive is to note that action on maxims that cannot
be universalised amounts to treating oneself as a special case:
If we now attend to ourselves in the transgression of any duty, we find
that we do not really will that our maxim should become a universal law,
since that is impossible for us, but that the opposite of our maxim should
instead remain a universal law, only we take the liberty of making an
29

This is the point of the Formula of the Law of Nature version of the Categorical
Imperative that invites agents to ask whether if the action they propose were to take place by
a law of the nature they would regard it as possible to will it. Critique of Practical Reason,
5:69; Groundwork 4:421; AoP 62

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

exception to it for ourselves (or just for this once) to the advantage of our
inclination. G 4:424
By contrast, if we are to offer others reasons for acting on one or another
principle, we must propose principles of action that are intelligible to and can
be adopted by those others as maxims. The point is not that others must
actually be able to act on a proposed principle, since in many cases they may
find no occasion or means do so: Kant does not suggest that ethics is a matter
of action on principles that it is feasible for everybody to enact, let alone on
principles that it is feasible for everybody enact simultaneously or at the same
place.
Kants focus on failures of universalisability brings to the surface a
fundamental feature of his ethical reasoning. The thought that some maxims
are fit to be universal laws but others are not, provides a criterion in the first
place for ethically unacceptable action, that is for maxims that should be
rejected, whose adoption would violate duty.
The ethical conclusions that
emerge from failed attempts to will maxims as universal laws distinguish
universalisable from non-universalisable maxims. However showing that a
maxim is universalisable does not show that it is a matter of duty. As Kant
sees it, establishing that a maxim could be universally adopted shows only that
acting on it is permissible. To show that a maxim is one of duty, it is necessary
to show both that the maxim can be universalised and that its rejection cannot.
Where a maxim and its rejection can both be universalised, neither rejecting
nor adopting that maxim is a matter of duty, and action on such maxims is
merely permissible. The formalisms are simple, if a bit tedious.
7. Contradictions in Conception, Contradictions in the Will
When I wrote Acting on Principle I was unsure how far these lines of argument
could be taken. How full an account of ethical duties could they support? It
was at least a start to identify arguments to show that if we are not to make
exceptions of our own caseif we are to treat others as persons like
ourselveswe must reject principles of aiming to destroy or threaten
agency, such as principles of
deception and coercion. But could the
categorical imperative establish more? One way of exploring the limits of
these arguments was to consider the extent to which they support
Kants
normative ethics: how good was the fit between the demands of the Categorical
Imperative and Kants classification of duties? Once again I stayed mainly
with the Formula of Universal Law.
Kant claims that the Formula of Universal Law can be used in two parallel
ways that are relevant to different ranges of duties. When applied to maxims of

15

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

action it may show up contradictions in conception: it may show that certain
principles cannot coherently be adopted by all. Contradictions in conception, 16
as the phrase suggests, arise when a maxim cannot be willed as a universal
law because the instrumental and consequential commitments that such willing
require contradict one another.
When applied to maxims of ends the
Formula of Universal Law may show up what Kant terms contradictions in
the will. A world in which such maxims are universally adopted is not
inconceivable: Kant accepts that we can coherently think of worlds without
beneficence, and of worlds in which nobody develops their potential.
But
it is not instrumentally rational for finite beings, who know that they will
sometimes be unable to pursue their aims unaided, to neglect either
beneficence or the development of their own potential. If they do so, they
fail to will
conditions that will sometimesor often!be indispensable
for their own pursuit of ends. I noted that simpler prudential arguments might
also reach these conclusions: a line of thought since explored more
thoroughly by others.30
A world of agents who are indifferent to one
anothers needs, or to the development of human potential, is a world in which
the instrumental conditions of action will be systematically lacking or at risk.
Consequently, maxims of indifference to others needs or to the development of
human potential cannot be coherently adopted by all in a world of finite agents
whose natural endowments need the support of others help and acquired
competences.

8. Beyond Principles

Like anybody finishing an absorbing but focussed piece of writing, I knew that
Acting on Principle had left many relevant issues undiscussed. I had said
little about other formulations of the Categorical Imperative. I had not
discussed
Kants claim that it is the supreme principle of practical reason. I
had said almost nothing about the idea of persons as Ends in themselves, which
is central to the Formula of the End in Itself version of the Categorical
Imperative, and did not consider the relationship of the Formula of
Universal Law to other versions of the Categorical Imperative. 31 Nor had I
discussed the basis of moral standing or
reasons for taking one or another
view of the scope of principles of universal form. I had mentioned
30

Alison Hills, book or articles?

Others have dealt with this extensively, including several who worked under John Rawls.
Thomas E. Hill, Jnr., Christine Korsgaard, Andrews Reath, Kerstein add. It is difficult to set
a boundary here because there is so much on treating others as persons, on not treating them
as mere means. Some of it remotely Kantian.
31

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

autonomy only in passing, and then (like many others) misconstrued Kants
17
conception of autonomy as a version of individual autonomy, which has
been so central to late twentieth century liberal thinking. I said nothing
about dignity, which the human rights movement then and since sees as one of
Kants fundamental insights, and which is receiving a lot of attention from Kant
scholars today. 32 Although I said a bit about judgement, I did little more than
protect a space for saying something more substantive. And I hardly referred to
Kants views on justice and institutions, on politics, history or religion.
Of the themes explored in Acting on Principle, one turned out to be central
not only to later work on Kant but also to much of my subsequent work in
political philosophy and ethics. This was the contention that
practical
reasoning should focus in the first place on agents and their duties, and treat
recipients or claimants and their rights as a derivative topic. I have explored
this line of thought in many contexts, often with little reference to Kants
specific treatment of these themes. These explorations
proved uphill
work in a culture that increasingly proclaims rights, while ignoring the
duties without which those rights remain gestural and unrealisable. However,
for present purposes I shall comment briefly on other, more Kantian
continuations of the lines of thought explored in Acting on Principle .

9. Upstream and Downstream

It would be absurd to think that a work on connections between reason and

action could be completed in any tidy or final way. But while I never aimed
to cover the topic exhaustively, I have followed the starting points explored
in Acting on Principle in a number of directions.
Much of the more Kantian parts of my subsequent work addressed two ranges
of questions. In the first place I tried to make sense of Kants claim that the
Categorical Imperative, in its various formulations, is the supreme principle of
practical reason. Secondly, I tried to show how
the principles of duty
identified by the Categorical Imperative can be deployed in action. I have often
thought of these two lines of inquiry as exploring the arguments that lie
respectively upstream and downstream from the topics discussed in Acting on
Principle. Upstream issues include Kants spectacular claim that a vindication
32

But see Oliver Sensen, Kant on Human Dignity, De Gruyter, 2011. Samuel J Kerstein is the
book out?

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

of reason is possible; downstream issues include consideration of ways in
which normative standards, among them principles of duty, can inform practical 18
judgement and be used to shape action.
Upstream lie the headwaters of Kants critical philosophy, and in particular his
challenging thought that critique and vindication of reason are possible: an
enterprise that many have condemned as pointless, because evidently circular.
As I explored Kants discussions on reason, which lie scattered throughout his
writings, it became increasingly clear to me that his underlying thought is that
reasons must be the sorts of things that agents can give and receive, accept or
reject. Reasoning must be fit to connect a plurality of (potential) reasoners,
whether in communication or in collaboration. This is why Kant repeatedly
deploys metaphors of construction and of public reasoning to suggest that
anything that is to count as reasoning must respect the necessary conditions for
the possibility of communication or collaboration, and also explains the
seeming oddity that many of his comments on the vindication of reason are
located in his writings on culture, politics and history.
During the last half century, many other philosophers, most prominently Jrgen
Habermas and John Rawls, have explored lines of thought that are at least
superficially similar to Kants, and have often spoken of their positions as
Kantian. However twentieth century accounts of public reason and of the
construction of reason all, so far as I know, depend in part on considerations
that Kant would have seen as arbitrary, such as preferences, or the search for
agreement, or procedures of discourse. They see public reasoning as a matter
of proceeding in ways that support freely entered discourse and agreement,
and are typically closely allied with conceptions of democratic reasoning. In
Kants terms, however, they propose heteronomous conceptions of public
reason.
As I worked through Kants scattered discussions of the vindication of
reason I came to see that his account of public reason was more austere, but
also more interesting. 33 What counted as reasoning for Kant was not freely
33

Constructivisms in Ethics 1988-89 ; Enlightenment as Autonomy: Kant's Vindication of

Reason 1990; Vindicating Reason 1992.; Kommunikative Rationalitt und praktische
Vernunft, 1993; Vier Modelle praktischer Vernunft, 1994; Practical Reason and
Possible Community: A Reply to Jean-Marc Ferry, 1994; Political Liberalism and Public
Reason: A Critical Notice of John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 1998; Within the Limits of
Reason 1997; Kantian Constructivisms, 1999 ; Kants Conception of Public Reason, 2001;
Autonomy and the Fact of Reason in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 30-41, 2002;
Constructivism in Rawls and Kant 2003; Constructivism vs. Contractualism, 2003; Kant:
Rationality as Practical Reason 2004; Autonomy, Plurality and Public Reason, 2004 ; SelfLegislation, Autonomy and the Form of Law, 2004, 13-26; Orientation in Thinking:
Geographical Problems, Political Solutions, 2011.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

conducted discourse that aims at or secures agreementalthough reasoned
19
discourse, like reasoned action, has indeed to be freely chosen, and may if
things go well secure agreementbut
freely conducted discourse that is
guided by principles that could be principles for all, so can be followed by any
potential audience or collaborator. The claim that the Categorical Imperative is
the supreme principle of practical reasoning is ultimately no morebut also
no lessthan the modal claim that we do not reason with others unless the
considerations we offer them are ones that (we take it) they can follow.
That is why the basic principle of practical reasoning demands action on
principles that can be followed by all: anything else may fail to offer others
anything that they can view as a reason. Despite the sometimes bombastic
rhetoric Kant sometimes uses, his modal conception of the demands of reason
turns out to be quite modest.
During a long period of intermittent work on Kants conception of practical
reason I came to realisewith many thanks to discussion of the topic by
Thomas E. Hill, Jnrhow closely Kants account of autonomy was connected
to his account of practical reason. Kantian autonomy cannot be identified
with any of conceptions of autonomy as individual independence that became
widely influential in the later decades of the twentieth century. 34 In retrospect
I think that I should have noticed this far sooner, for the textual evidence is
substantial. In Groundwork Kant articulated the so-called Formula of
Autonomy version of the Categorical Imperative as the idea of the will of
every rational being as a will giving universal law: it is clearly very close to
the Formula of Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative. In
the Conflict of the Faculties he remarks that the power to judge
autonomouslythat is freely (according to principles of thought in general) is
called reason35, while in the Critique of Practical Reason, he asserts that
the moral law expresses nothing other than the autonomy of pure practical
reason. 36 In short, what interests Kant is the autonomy of reasoning, rather

34

See Allen Woods useful list of versions of the Formula of Autonomy in Kant's
Ethical Thought, 1999, 163-4, also .the references in note 33, Autonomy and Trust in
Bioethics, 2002 and
Autonomy: The Emperors New Clothes, 2003.
35

Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, 7:27.

36

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Theorem IV, 5:33.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

than that
of individual reasoners. He does not construe autonomy as
20
some version of individual independence. He does not speak of autonomous
persons or selves. The central position he accords to a conception of
principled autonomy depends on seeing it matter of acting on principles that
combine law like form and universal scope, so on reasoned principles. 37
Downstream considerations have also proved absorbing. The indeterminacy
of principles of action that led Anscombe (and many other proponents of virtue
ethics) to conclude that principles lack practical implications provides the
context for Kants discussion of practical judgement and the enactment of
principles. Kant insisted that there are and can be no complete rules for the
exercise of judgement the very point that Anscombe concludes will derail
any ethics of principles. Judgement, including practical judgement does not
follow any algorithm; rather it is a special talent that cannot be taught but
only practiced. 38 Practical judgement is exercised by bringing reasoning , and
with it principles of duty, to bear on action, but it does so not by subsuming
particulars under those principles, but rather by enacting or instantiating them
in particular situations. Kant discussed this task and its difficulties in several of
his later works, but never assumes that acting on principles of duty will be a
matter of applying principles to already existing particulars. Rather, the
exercise of practical judgment is a matter of finding at least some way to respect
and enact a variety of principles of dutyand other practical demands in
particular situations. 39

The fact that we often need to enact a plurality of different practical principles,
including a plurality of principles of duty, can be problematic. For the most part
it is not impossible to combine truth-telling with refraining from injury, keeping
promises with helping others. But there are cases when one or more
practical, including ethical, demand is hard or impossible to reconcile with
others. In some cases, practical judgement may fail to discover any adequate
way of meeting all ethical requirements, or of meeting them well, and some of
37
38

39

See in particular Self-Legislation, Autonomy and the Form of Law, 2004.

CPR A133 B172

See The Power of Example, 1986; Principles, Judgment and Institutions, 1997; Instituting
Principles: between Duty and Action, 1997, revised 2002; Practical Principles and
Practical Judgement, 2001; Modern Moral Philosophy and the Problem of Relevant
Descriptions, 2004; Experts, Practitioners and Practical Judgement, 2007; Normativity and
Practical Judgement 2007; Applied Ethics: Naturalism, Normativity and Public Policy, 2009.

Acting on Principle, Intro Essay for 2cnd Edition, O ONeill

them may be short-changed. This seems to me no moreand no lessthan a
21
reflection of the way things are, and not a demonstration of the inadequacy of
Kants ethics, or of any other ethical system. The possibility of searing
dilemmas or conflicting ethical claims is real, and remedies are incomplete. But
there are partial remedies. They include the construction and maintenance of
effective social and political practices that reduce and head off the number of
conflicting demands. They also include the practices of self discipline that Kant
discusses under the heading of ethical duties of omission. And they include
practices for acknowledging the claims of unmetsometimes unmeetable
claims of duties. The claims of unmet, sometimes unmeetable duties has been
illuminated by seeing them as remainders that represent undischarged ethical
demands. However, remainders are often seen rather narrowly as calling for
certain attitudes to unmet dutiesclassically regret remorse and guilt.
However, we need a broader account of ways of dealing with the claims of
unmet duties, that covers action as well as attitudes. Unmet obligations may
call for
a gamut of action ranging from apology, punishment and
forgiveness, to ways of making amends and wider forms of reconsideration and
reconciliation.