“Under the Guise of the Good”

Between ‘Indubitably Certain’ and ‘Quite Detrimental’ to Philosophy: Kant on the Guise of the Good Thesis

“…Consequently, I take these considerations to count against the weak GG interpretation. Stefano Bacin, for example, claims that in ‘Kant’s view, the Thesis [GG] only applies to the determination of the will through the moral law ’ (2018: 1712); that is, GG applies only when agents act from duty. Similarly, Louden (2021: 7) says that ‘[a]ny guise of the good that rational agents act on is one that has first been determined by the moral law’.…”

“… 25 Bacin (2018: 1711) argues that there is no parallel between the alleged claim to universality of self-conceit and the universality of moral principles because he adopts the view that self-conceit consists exclusively in the imposition of the subject’s will on others. It has recently been argued, however, that this ‘interpersonal’ aspect of self-conceit either depends on the subject’s mistakenly taking self-love as his or her own supreme practical principle (Moran 2014, which Bacin surprisingly references) or is simultaneous with it (Russell 2020).…”

“…What is also certain is that there is a sharp divide in the literature when it comes to which version Kant endorsed. On the one hand, some contend that Kant held GG only in the case of morally good actions and that the thesis 'does not seem to play the role of a fundamental formal principle in Kant's general view of agency, since it does not hold for morally defective maxims, which are not universalisable and cannot be taken to manifest representations of goodness' (Bacin 2018(Bacin : 1712. I call this the weak GG reading of Kant, for it holds that only morally good actions are performed under the guise of the good.…”