Introduction: A Great Reversal?

Abstract

Certainly not the enterprise of showing that individuals or societies or the human race or all rational or sentient beings can expect to enjoy any sort of welfare, greater happiness or enhanced flourishing by living morally. Equally certainly, however, this was not because Kant had anything against happiness, or thought that it was unimportant, or that it was only important when arising out the consciousness of doing one’s duty, or even worse, as has sometimes been supposed, that moral virtue requires us to do our duty unwillingly or unhappily.¹ He did, after all, define “the highest good” as the union of moral virtue and happiness understood as quite distinct and separable elements, so that while the goodness of the latter was conditional upon involving no violation of the former, it otherwise possessed an independent value that everyone had every right to pursue.² If Kant did not also believe that we each had a positive direct duty to seek our own happiness this was only because he thought we were by nature already inclined to do so.