Kant's "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals"

[mr.141]

I'm contrasting Kant's idea of autonomy and freedom in the "Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals" to Werther's idea of individuality in Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther."

I've been analyzing Werther's idea of individuality based on the quote "The things I know, anyone can know--but my heart is mine and mine alone." Based on that quote, I've derived that Werther places greater value on feelings and experiences than knowledge. Kant, on the other hand, clearly favors rational thinking and reasoning over "forces" external to the will, such as passion and feelings.

Now I'm trying to find evidence of some middle ground between Werther and Kant's ideas. Somewhere in either text where one may agree with another in some point.

If anyone could help or point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

[Cunninglinguist]

I'm contrasting Kant's idea of autonomy and freedom in the "Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals" to Werther's idea of individuality in Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther."

I've been analyzing Werther's idea of individuality based on the quote "The things I know, anyone can know--but my heart is mine and mine alone." Based on that quote, I've derived that Werther places greater value on feelings and experiences than knowledge. Kant, on the other hand, clearly favors rational thinking and reasoning over "forces" external to the will, such as passion and feelings.

Now I'm trying to find evidence of some middle ground between Werther and Kant's ideas. Somewhere in either text where one may agree with another in some point.

If anyone could help or point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Just as a note--I'm sure you're not doing this--it's a fool's error to judge the nature of a man's philosophy by one quote. For example, Kant once said "All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason." Yet he also said, "I have to limit [my] knowledge in order to make room for faith," which evidences that Kant seriously and personally made room for feelings, illogical convictions, etc.

Kant is a rather misunderstood and complex philosopher; in German he is rather inaccessible to even those with backgrounds in philosophy. In translations more so. People tend to assume that he made no room for feeling (based on things like the above quote). Yet, in that quote, he does not mean that reason should be our ultimate priority for which we conduct every affair in our lives. He probably means something more like, there is no higher test of truth than reason.

That said, (if you're not already,) if you're going to get anywhere with Kant you pretty much have to read him. Even secondary literature written by professionals--let alone wikipedia--is subject to interpretive inconsistencies.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find an explicit accord between Kant and Werther. Nevertheless, I think that with a little bit of interpretation, one could find an implicit one.

[billl]

Haven't read Goethe, but I'm going to just look at the quote you've provided as the object of your focus, and you can decide if I've made a mistake of misinterpretation.

To me, the quote seems to be referring to an interior force, a will. Kant believed in something like this, as well. There's plenty of nuance, however, and I'm not sure if it makes sense to explore the issue too much, it might quickly become apples and oranges.

This is how I'm seeing this at first glance:

1. Werhter is talking about individuality of will. Beyond the world of information, he sees there is something inside which gives him direction and helps him make choices. His *own* choices. His point is maybe that this heart (the source of will) is his alone, and others can't get such a direct glimpse of it, or something. I think it is the separation of heart/will from what is outside, and/or the special role that heart/will plays, that Werther is referring to. To a certain degree, it might be about emotions and experiences, but I'm wondering if that discussion might be a further step beyond the point that the quote is making (in my admittedly uninformed view), about heart/will as a driving, judging (and privately known/owned) force.

2. Kant is of course interested in using reason to get at a lot of things. Regarding morals, Kant believed that there was an individual freedom to decide what we should do. As much as he valued reason, the idea of moral responsibility seemed to require that a person has free will, and that people can choose to choose/behave in contradiction to Reason. However, I think this is about as far as Kant probably extends things to Werther's position, because Kant's morality was about trying to take a universal view of things, and act according to *duty* towards this maximally broad perspective: you should do that thing that makes the most sense (in the biggest possible sense of "most sense"). The idea is to avoid hypocrisy, basically, and so you have him put forth his Categorical Imperative.

I don't think that there would be much obvious payoff in looking for a connection between Werther, and Kant's Categorical Imperative, but it wouldn't hurt to maybe mull it over since I haven't read Goethe and can't be depended on as far as that judgment goes. Still, I think that both Kant (in finding a basis for moral responsibility) and Goethe (with that quote, pointing to something that separates him from other people and their judgments or something, despite the shared world of knowable things that they inhabit) are sort of agreeing on the concept of individuality, perhaps even Free Will.

Don't hold me to anything, though, I haven't read the Werther, and it's been some time since I actually studied Kant. Here's a link that might be useful in regards to this, by the way. It certainly was to me while I put this post together...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Freedom_and_autonomy


EDIT: Really sorry. I just realized that I probably spent more time going over Kant than the OP would've probably thought necessary. I guess my only contribution in all of that up there would be my questioning whether Werther is talking about emotions and experiences in that quote, or if it is just about individuality and freedom (leaving questions about morality and the importance of Reason aside, and with the ideas about emotions and experience merely being traditional accompaniment to mentions of the "heart" as a source of Will).