114

2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

AGENCY AND IMPUTATION: COMMENTS ON
REATH
rxs +ixxrnx\xx
The University of St Andrews
1. Introduction
In the closing chapter of Agency and Autonomy
1
Andrews Reath provides a systematic
discussion of moral, legal and social imputation of human actions and their
consequences in Kants practical philosophy. This is no easy task. It is hardly
an accident that the topic is usually passed over in the secondary literature,
2
and
primary sources are in short supply. Kants ofcial statements on the topic are
conned to two brief paragraphs in the Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals.
In addition, we possess Kantian examples of particular judgements of imputation,
a good many handwritten notes in his interleaved copy of Baumgartens Initia,
and a few relevant pages in the lectures on ethics, which take their cue from
Baumgartens text. All in all, these scattered writings hardly constitute a
systematic theory of imputation. There is, however, enough material to try
to construct a defensible theory on Kants behalf, which is the goal that Reath
is pursuing in Agency and the Imputation of Consequences in Kants Ethics.
The following comments are intended as a contribution to this project.
Reath and I fortunately share the conviction that Kants views on respon-
sibility can be divorced from certain rst-order moral views reected in some
of his examples. Occasional errors of judgement notwithstanding, they are well
worth exploring philosophically. I also agree with Reaths central thesis that
the imputation of actions and consequences should be treated as a question
for practical reason, rather than a straightforward factual, causal or metaphysical
issue ( p. 251). However, I think that we should depart from his reconstruction
in some important respects. I shall argue that, contra Reath, the boundaries of
duties must be revised with reference to Kants original classication; that this
process reveals the system of duties implicit in Kants principles of imputation
to be more fragile than Reath seems to assume; and that in the end there is still
no convincing argument for Kants thesis that the unforeseen consequences
of an action can, under certain circumstances, be imputed to the agent.
1. Andrews Reath, Agency and Autonomy in Kants Moral Philosophy. Unless otherwise stated, page
numbers refer to this book. References to Kants works follow the usual pattern of volume
number (in Roman numerals) and page number (in Arabic numerals). Kants notes or reec-
tions are quoted with reference to their number, prexed by R.
2. The most notable exception is Thomas E. Hills Kant on Responsibility for Consequences,
in Respect, Pluralism and Justice (Oxford University Press, 2000, rst published in 1994).
Philosophical Books Vol. 49 No. 2 April 2008 pp. 114124
Philosophical Books Vol. 49 No. 2
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford,
OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
115
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
2. The Murderer at the Door
As Reath notes, a particularly prominent and controversial application of Kants
views on imputation can be found in his little essay on the Alleged Right to
Lie from Philanthropy, published shortly after Part II of the Metaphysics of Morals in
1797. In the essay, Kant asserts that it is wrong to lie to the murderer at the door
to protect a friend who is hiding in ones house. He argues for an unconditional
duty of truthfulness, irrespective of the bad consequences that may come about
as a result ( VIII 426).
3
This naturally affects questions of responsibility. If you have
strictly adhered to the truth, public justice cannot touch you ( VIII 427), i.e.
you cannot be held accountable for the bad effects of a truthful statementin
this case the death of a friendif a condent lie was the sole means of preventing
it. By contrast, if you breach this duty by lying to the would-be criminal you can
be held responsible for any bad results that might occur, foreseen and unforeseen.
Kant considers the following alternative courses of events:
It is entirely possible that after you have honestly answered Yes to the
murderers question whether his enemy is in the house, the latter may have
gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer,
and the deed would thus not have been done; whereas, if you lied and said
he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to
you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose
on himthen you might quite rightly be prosecuted as the author of his
death. For if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the
murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught
by neighbours rushing along and the deed have been prevented. ( VIII 427)
This conclusion strikes most readers as counterintuitive. However, Reath
plausibly argues that these speculations stem from Kants conception of what
ones moral requirements are in this situation ( p. 251). It is clear that Kants
attribution of blame and guilt rests on a prior conviction that lying in these
(or any other) circumstances conicts with a strict juridical duty. His far-
fetched alternative scenarios are not intended to give a quasi-consequentialist
argument for an unconditional duty of truthfulness. Kant is not saying that,
as the consequences of a lie are always uncertain, and lying might be legally
punishable after all, it is safer, all things considered, to err on the side of
veracity. Any such strategy is bound to be circular because only the bad effects
of wrongful action are punishable to begin with. Rather, as the last sentence
of the present paragraph shows
4
, Kants judgements presuppose an absolute
3. For the purposes of this piece, let us assume Kant is right and bracket the question whether
there is an absolute duty of veracity.
4. Whoever tells a lie, he says, must answer for the consequences, no matter how well intentioned
the lie or unforeseen the consequences, even before the civil court of law, and must pay the penalty
for themand what follows is clearly intended to supply the justicationbecause truthfulness
is a duty that must be regarded as the basis of all duties founded on contract, the law of which would
be rendered uncertain and useless if even the least exception to them were admitted (VIII 427).
116
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
legal duty to be truthful. It is justied on the grounds that any explicit licence
to lie would undermine the foundation of all contractual duties.
In short, the sentences quoted above spell out what Kant sees as the con-
sequences of an unconditional juridical duty of veracity, namely that certain
circumstances can turn a lie into a punishable offence. The alternative
histories he provides do not discredit his views on imputation. As a matter of
fact, they make use of more general principles of imputation of actions and
consequences that fall under the laws of strict duty, correctly located by Reath
in the Metaphysics of Morals.
5
3. Kants Principles of Imputing Consequences
Let us examine Kants ofcial principles of imputing good and bad conse-
quences in detail:
The good or bad
6
consequences of an action that is owedas well as the
consequences of omitting a meritorious actioncannot
7
be imputed to the
subject (modus imputationis tollens).
The good consequences of a meritorious actionas well as the bad con-
sequences of a wrongful actioncan be imputed to the subject (modus
imputationis ponens). (Metaphysics of Morals, VI 228)
5. As Kant does not invoke an abstract principle of imputationthough he raises the related question
when the death of the friend can be imputed as part of a deedthere is the possibility of another,
if somewhat remote interpretation. Kant may be applying the juridical denition of lying, criticized
earlier for including the philosophically superuous condition that the lie must do some harm
(mendacium est falsiloquium in praeiudicium alterius, VIII 426). The lawyers do not see Kants point that
a lie always harms humanity as such (whatever that may mean); but if the friend is killed as a result
of a lieI lie to save the friend but unknown to me the friend has left the house and is consequently
murderedwe have a recognizable victim, and the conventional legal denition might seem to
apply. My lie is a causal contribution to harming the friend. This interpretation would solve the
puzzle of accidental connection of the deed and the unforeseen circumstances, at least in this
case, but it would also make Kants alternative scenario much less interesting philosophically.
6. Or harmful, damaging, disastrous. In both sentences, Kant uses the word schlimm, rather
than bse (evil) or schlecht (bad).
7. When Kant says that actions cannot or can be imputed, what kind of possibility does he have
in mind? In Kant on Responsibility for Consequences, Thomas Hill discusses two conceivable
answers. First, can could be taken to indicate that Kant is laying out merely certain necessary
conditions for correct imputation ( p. 171). Hill correctly rejects this approach because it makes
Kants theses too weak and indeterminate. Secondly, the can could be seen to allow for cases
in which imputation does not in fact take place, e.g. because there is no functioning judge in place
to make the judgement ( pp. 1612, fn. 10). I do not think the judge has to be quite so ofcial as
Hill seems to assume, but if in the aftermath of the deed there is neither agent nor victim or
observer to pass judgement this interpretation might be a possibility. However, it seems more
likely that Kant, thirdly, wishes to indicate that conditions must be met for an act of imputation
to bein a broad sensemorally possible, i.e. justied, legitimate or appropriate.
117
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
If we grant, for the sake of the argument, that the example of the murderer
at the door concerns an action that is owed,
8
and that lying would thus be
wrongful or illegitimate (unrechtmig), these principles yield the following
four verdicts. (i) If the householder speaks truthfully and the friend is murdered,
he is not to blame for the friends death (the murderer is). (ii) If the householder
lies to the murderer who then, as a consequence, meets the friend accidentally
and carries out his murderous intentions, he bears some responsibility for his
friends death (but the murderer is still the main culprit). (iii) If the householder
lies, the murderer is deceived, and the friend manages to escape, he still did
wrong and cannot claim credit for having saved his friend.
9
(iv) If the house-
holder truthfully says that his friend is hiding in his house but is deceived
about the friends current location (and the would-be murderer is consequently
apprehended by a crowd of neighbours, and so forth), he does not deserve
any credit for saving the friend either: telling what he sincerely believed to be
the truth he was simply doing hisstrict, juridical, not meritoriousduty.
The householder has no choice. He has to reply that he believes his friend to
be hiding in his house. As the example is set up, there is nothing he can do
to saveor to be imputed with savingthe friends life.
4. Deeds and Accidents
There is more to be said about lies and their consequences. If the householder
observes the (alleged) duty of veracity his friends death should not be imputed
to him because, as Kant puts it, it was merely an accident (casus) that the truth
of the statement did harm the inhabitant of the house; it was not a free deed
(in the juridical sense) (VIII 428). These concepts (accidentdeed ) are used to draw
a sharp dividing line between those effects of an action that can legitimately be
said to be something an agent has done with his act, described with reference to
the relevant law, as opposed to mere occurrences that are merely contingently
connected with the action in question. If an agent is to be responsible for the
consequences of his activity they must follow from his deeds, properly so
described, and not result from accidental events that he could do nothing about.
The death of the friend is the result of the murderers deed. It is imputable
as such.
10
The householders truthful declaration was a deed, something he
did. It is subject to moral laws, and can be imputed to him as dutiful. But the
effects of this deed cannot be imputed to the agent because they are not part
of what he has done. He neither murdered the friend himself, nor did he
8. There is an additional complication. In the essay, Kant argues that the householder does not owe
the truthful statement to the murderer. Kant and his opponent, Benjamin Constant, agree
on this point. But Kant goes on to argue that veracity is a formal duty owed to humanity in
general ( VIII 426); and as such, it falls under his general principles of imputation after all.
Of course, the question remains what such a duty could possibly be, and how an action can
be owed not to an individual but to humanity as such.
9. This can only indirectly be inferred from the principles at VI 228 (see Section 6 below).
10. In fact, there is an inherent relation between a murderers deed and the death of the victim
whereas there is no such connection between a truthful statement and someone elses death.
118
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
contribute to the friends being murdered. Kant would dismiss any descrip-
tion to this effect as inappropriate. That is why a little later in the essay he
says that the householder himself does not, properly speaking, do the harm
to the one who suffers as a result; but this harm is caused by accident. The
reason given is that the agent is not free to choose in this matter, since
truthfulness (if in fact he must speak) is an unconditional duty (VIII 428).
11
Let us again consult the Metaphysics of Morals. The Doctrine of Right tells
us more about the notion of a deed in the juridical sense. A deed is an action
insofar as it comes under obligatory laws and hence insofar as the subject,
in doing it, is considered in terms of the freedom of his choice (VI 223).
Later on, the connection between authorship of actions, deeds and juridical
imputation is further explained:
Imputation (imputatio) in the moral sense is the judgement by which someone
is regarded as the author (causa libera) of an action, which is then called a
deed (factum) and stands under laws. If the judgement carries with it also
the legal consequences of this deed, it is an imputation having legal force
(imputatio iudiciaria s. valida); otherwise it is merely an imputation appraising
the deed (imputatio diiudicatoria). ( VI 227)
On Kants assumption of a formal duty of veracity, the deed of the householder
consists merely in his making a truthful declaration, as he must. Everything else
is due to accidental features of the situation. If lying is unconditionally wrong, and
he could not avoid answering either yes or no, there was objectively no choice for
him but to say what he thought to be true. The only person responsible for the
friends death is the murderer. It is his deed, he alone is the author of its effect
(VI 223); and unlike the connection with the truthful declaration, the connec-
tion between the murderers deed and the victims murder is not accidental.
12
5. The Scope of Kants Principles
Elsewhere, Kant mentions other examples of effects of human actions that do not
count as the effects of deeds in the requisite sense because the agent was not free
to choose otherwise. A particularly striking case can be found in a late reection
(R 7297). Kant suggests that my act of murder is a deed because it was
possible for me to refrain from it. The killing can be imputed, I can be held
responsible for the victims death. By contrast, if I kill another person in an
act of self-defence the death of the assailant cannot be imputed to me because
11. Note again that for simplicitys sake we are assuming throughout that Kant is right and the
householder ought to speak truthfully, a view that neither Reath nor I personally share.
12. Certain effects of ones actions may seem to fall under moral laws, such as avoiding harm
or helping others. But if your hands are tied by a prior duty, these consequences cannot be
added to your slab of deeds, and you deserve neither to be blamed for the one or rewarded
for the other. Your actions cannot then be subsumed under these less stringent laws (see
R 7131). Note that the German Zurechnung literally indicates putting something on the list of
an agents actions, adding it to the account of his good or bad deeds (cf. accountability).
119
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
it was not (morally) possible for me to refrain (meine Gegenwehr durfte ich nicht
unterlassen),
13
presumably because failure to protect ones life would contravene
a strict(ish) duty to the self. When threatened, the only moral option is to
defend oneself, even if in extreme cases this leads to the death of the assailant.
Moreover, the Doctrine of Virtue contains the following example:
[A] householder has ordered a servant to say not at home if a certain
person asks for him. The servant does this and, as a result, the master slips
away and commits a serious crime, which would otherwise have been prevented
by the guard sent to arrest him. Who (in accordance with ethical principles)
is guilty in this case? Surely the servant too, who violated a duty to himself by
his lie, the results of which his own conscience imputes to him. (Metaphysics
of Morals, VI 431).
14
The case of the servant is structurally similar to that of the murderer at
the door, but the context is ethical rather than juridical.
It is because of examples like thesehe quotes that of the servant (pp. 250
1)that Reath assumes that Kants principle of imputing negative conse-
quences can be extended to cover imputation in a broader moral sense.
According to Reath, the heading of strict moral requirements must cover
perfect duties, non-performance of which is wrong and blameable, though
not legally punishable and also some positive duties to give aid, or to inter-
vene to prevent harm to others (p. 265, n. 1). In particular, agents should,
he argues, be responsible for the harmful consequences that ensue if they do
not comply with such a strict moral requirement.
However, there is evidence that Kant would resist this extension of the
category of strict duty, and not without cause. In the essay on lying Kant takes
the quite unprecedented step of arguing for an unconditional requirement
of veracity not as an ethical but as a juridical duty (see VIII 426 fn.). The
alternative scenario, which Reath takes as the starting point of his discussion,
is conducted in decidedly juridical terms. In fact, he acknowledges that Kants
examples of responsibility for negative consequences mostly occur in legal
contexts (p. 265, n. 1); and there is evidence elsewhere that the principle
employed in the essay concerns duties of right only. Admittedly, the principles
set out towards the end of the Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals (VI 228,
13. In this context, Kant tends to distinguish between attribution (Zuschreibung) and imputation
(Zurechnung). We can attribute the killing of a human being to an ox, but we impute a murder
to the murderer (R 7298).
14. Kants solution does not strike me as very condent. The example is brought up as one of
his casuistical questions, which Kant notoriously fails to settle, not as part of the doctrinal
text. It is possible that Kant is aware of the problematic nature of a move to extend his
principles of imputation to perfect duties that lack legal sanctions; or maybe he realizes that
his intuition about the servant commits him to making truthfulness a strict legal duty, which
was not yet his view in the Metaphysics of Morals. Note that the publication dates of Constants
Des Ractions Politiques and the Doctrine of Virtue of Kants Metaphysics of Morals make it
impossible that Constant was thinking of this example when he charged Kant with absolut-
ism about truthfulness.
120
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
quoted above) concern ethics as well as right,
15
but we need to draw a careful
dividing line between the two spheres for these principles to work in the way
intended. According to the lectures on moral philosophywhich Reath
himself quotes (p. 265, fn. 1)these principles imply a clear division of labour:
the violation of juridical laws must at all times be imputed in demeritum,
the observance of ethical laws in meritum (Collins, XXVII 290). This corres-
ponds exactly to Kants modus ponens of imputation at VI 228.
6. Is Benecence a Strict Duty?
Let us examine more closely the kind of benecent act that according to
Reath the principle of imputation of strict duty should be able to cover.
He writes:
By Kants principles, if helping is required and I do nothing, then my
failure to help would be imputable to me. If a harm then results that my
helping would have prevented, the harm is imputable to me. (p. 255).
While Kant would of course admit that my omission was a moral failure, and
perhaps to be condemned as vicious, he is bound to deny that help is ever
required as a matter of strict duty in the required terminological sense, i.e.
that I am responsible for the harmful results and thus guilty of causing
harm.
16
An omission does not become blameable whenever I fail to perform
an action that is required. It becomes blameable when the action I fail to
perform is required as a juridical duty and can as such be enforced by the state.
That is the reason why we lack any genuine choice in such cases.
17
By con-
trast, an action is meritorious if it goes beyond not the moral law but beyond
the law, compliance with which can be exacted by the legal system (als wozu
er nach dem Gesetze gezwungen werden kann, VI 227).
18
If so, surely any dutiful act
of assistance is meritorious, no matter how pressing.
19
Our common moral intuitions conrm this diagnosis. The concept of gratitude
is closely related to that of merit. But there is no need for me to be grateful
15. This is clear from the chapter heading (VI 222) as well as the inclusion of meritorious duty
and its consequences.
16. I suppose it would also be difcult for Reath to distinguish, in a principled fashion, positive
duties of assistance, prevention etc. that are strict from those that are wide.
17. In R 7295 Kant says that failure to comply with a duty that is owed counts as a deed, not
an omission, because it damages that which rightfully belongs to another, whereas an omission
is not a deed (but rather an omission proper) when it concerns benecent actions (Handlungen
der Gtigkeit).
18. By contrast, Reath seems to think that meritorious action is action that goes beyond that
which the moral law requires (see, e.g., p. 258, an agent who does more than duty requires),
but that would be supererogatorynot meritoriousaction; and I am sceptical as to
whether there is a place for that in Kantian ethics.
19. Let us bracket cases in which I am strictly obligated to help for some specic reason, e.g.
because I earn my money as a rescue worker I am indebted to someone who has done me
a favour, or I live in a state in which Samaritan laws require acts of assistance in particularly
pressing situations.
121
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
to someone who strictly adheres to his duty, in the sense that he returns what
is owed or fails to remove what is mine by right. There is no need to be grateful
to someone for failing to commit a crime, for not lying to us, for example,
murdering us or stealing our philosophy books. In fact, acts of assistance are
meritorious and deserve our gratitude precisely because we do not owe them
to the person assisted. On the page he sets out his principles of imputation
( VI 228) Kant also suggests that urgencylike making a sacrice and lacking
a personal relation with the person in needcan make an act of assistance
particularly meritorious. When we help, we do not just return that which belongs
to another. In other words, when we fail to do our meritorious duty we are
doing the wrong thing, but we do not wrong the person we fail to assist.
20
As a matter of fact, our failure to help is an omission, and not a deed in the
requisite juridical sense at all.
21
At this point, Reath (and others) will no doubt be worried that the duty of
helping others in cases of emergency might be too wide, or not sufciently
stringent. Can there really be no strict obligation to help? The answer to this
question depends on whether strict is used in the specic Kantian sense of
perfectas opposed to wide or imperfector in a more colloquial sense
of the word. In standard moral situations, there can be a strict duty to help
only in the latter sense, when an act of benecence is obligatory for any
person present and capable of the act. Benecence can be a moral require-
ment that pretty much anyone is rationally bound to pursue and in that way
strict. It is worth bearing in mind that any all-things-considered duty at the
token level, in a given situation, commands with the force of necessity. In the
Groundwork duty is dened as the necessity of an action from reverence or
respect for the moral law (IV 400); and in the Critique of Judgement, Kant
poignantly says that where the moral law speaks, there is, objectively, no
further room for free choice with regard to what there is to be done (V 210).
However, unlike legal commands this moral necessity isas revealed at the
end of Groundwork IIa matter not of coercion or constraint but of your own
autonomy. No external power forces you to be moral. The decision is up to
you. If necessary, you have to force yourself.
There is another reason why Reath should notor at least need not
assimilate duty of benecence to strict juridical duty. At the token level, the
bad consequences of obligatory action can never be imputed. Kant obviously
assumes that agents cannot be held responsible for the negative consequences
of doing their strict duty or the negative side-effects of meritorious action. He
does not explicitly say so in the Metaphysics of Morals, but it can safely be
inferred from what he does not say. Recall that he rst states that the good or
bad consequences of actions according with owed duty cannot be imputed to
20. In the Groundwork, assistance is specically classed as a kind of meritorious as opposed to
owed duty (IV 430, the fourth illustration of the Formula of Humanity).
21. Cf. R 7139, which covers both neutral cases in which consequences cannot be imputed: If I
am merely passive (e.g. if I do something under constraint) that cannot be attributed to me
(beygemessen werden); if I am morally passive, it cannot be imputed to me (zugerechnet werden);
hence if I am merely passive there is no deed (That).
122
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
the agent; then, that the good results of meritorious action as well as the bad
results of wrongful action can be imputed to the agent (VI 228). This strongly
suggests that the consequences of the two kinds of action he fails to mention
cannot be imputed to their respective agents: the good consequences of a
wrongful action and the bad consequences of a meritorious action. Both
principles are plausible.
22
In conjunction with the explicit denial that the bad
consequences of owed action can be imputed, the implicit denial that the bad
consequences of meritorious action can be imputed produces the result that
Reath attributes to actions in accordance with what he calls strict duty: an
agent cannot be held responsible for the negative effects of doing his duty.
23
In conclusion, a specic token act of assistance can be both unrelentingly
necessary and meritorious. It is necessary because it is commanded by duty,
even if in general terms it is wide, imperfect or contingent; it is meritori-
ous because it is not owed ( geschulded ) to the other person involved, who has
no right that I save him. I am thus not guilty (schuldig) of the persons death,
even if my omission was evil and I spectacularly fall short of the ideal of a
morally good person.
24
This reconstruction of Kants principles preserves an
essential difference between killing and failing to save, even if morality teaches
us that it is necessary to refrain from both. Reaths account of imputation, I
fear, obliterates this distinction.
25
7. Kantian Moral Luck?
The only two cases in which unforeseen consequences can be imputed are thus
the good consequences of meritorious action, if an act turns out to be even more
benecial than intended, for instance; and the bad consequences of wrongful
action, as when an illegitimate act turns out to be more harmful than foreseen
or intended. An action conned to limits of strict duty, which lacks both merit
and guilt, cannot connect the agent with the unforeseen consequences of his
action. Put somewhat differently, an agent can be responsible for unforeseen
consequences only if the original action displays merit or guilt to begin
22. One should add, however, that foreseeable bad consequences will affect the decision as to
whether there is a meritorious duty to perform a certain act to begin with.
23. Two differences remain. First, Kant would take a rather strict line on the unforeseen bad
consequences of failing to do our meritorious duty, e.g. even if this duty concerns a case of vital
assistance. Such consequences cannot be imputed. Secondly, and conversely, by assimilating
some cases of meritorious duty to strict duty Reath deprives the helper not only of the credit that
is his due but also of the credit that might be gained later because of unintended good consequences.
24. Cf. R 7302, where Kant distinguishes between internal and external imputation. In the
Metaphysics of Morals and elsewhere Kant is mostly concerned with the latter (with the imputa-
tion of consequences), and in that respect the record of someone who fails to help is beyond
reproach. However, Kant adds that all actionsincluding omissions of good deeds (Unterlassung
der Wohlthaten)are imputable internally. Omissions can thus be evil without being criminal.
25. The second variant of the categorical imperative can be used to illustrate this. If I do not
help when my help is needed, I fail to treat the other person as an independent, objective
end like myself; but I do not use him merely as a means towards my own purposes.
123
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
with, and these values can then be increased. They can never be created, so
to say, ex nihilo.
26
Kants general principle of the imputation of consequences is that this is
possible if and only if the effects of an action can be counted as something
the agent has done, which is certainly plausible when we consider the actions
of murderers, who both intend and foresee the harmful consequences of their
vicious deeds. However, as Reath notes, we must ask the question why unforeseen
or unintended consequences can ever be imputed to the agent. Even if lying
is wrong, why should the householder be blamed, at least in part, for the death
of his friend if his lie led to the latters discovery? To use a less morbid, positive
case: if I rescue someone who twenty years later develops a drug that cures
thousands, can I really be said to have any share in that, and should these
patients be grateful to me as a result? Both assessments follow from Kants
principles. Curiously, with regard to personal merit and demerit he is advocat-
ing a variant of what Thomas Nagel has dubbed consequential moral luck.
Focusing on the negative case, Reaths solution of the puzzle turns on the idea
that one can be held accountable for an action and itsbadconsequences
only if one could have acted otherwise, i.e. could have refrained from doing the
wrong act; and that in Kants ethical framework there is, of course, always decisive
reason to do otherwise when one does the wrong thing (pp. 2623). This explains
why we do not blame someone for the bad consequences of action commanded
by duty, when it was morally impossible to act otherwise than one did. But I have
my doubts as to whether it can also explain the imputation of bad consequences
of wrongful action. Even if there is always a decisive reason to refrain from an
immoral act, this reason isex hypothesinot connected with the unforeseen
consequences of the wrongful action. To justify Kants thesis that the bad
consequences of wrongful acts can be imputed to the agent precisely such a
connection seems desirable. Moreover, it is not clear that a similar story can
be told to justify imputing the good consequences of doing ones meritorious
dutyalthough we may be less reluctant to give agents credit they do not strictly
deserve than to blame them. I think there is some truth in Reaths account,
because Kant frequently intimates that merit and guilt arise only when we
depart from a norm of owed duty that can be legally enforced. At the same time,
this idea is not quite sufcient to close the gap. Something else is needed.
8. Conclusion
The most important result of our discussion has been that Kants principles
of imputing consequences are not quite as unproblematic as Reath seems to
think, not just with regard to the problem of moral luck. The boundaries
between strict and wide duties must be restored, but this leaves us with the
26. R 6806 suggests that for the effects to be imputable there must be some crime (Verbrechen)
or merit (Verdienst ). Omitting good deeds is merely not noble (which, of course, we ought
to be). See also R 7160: With regard to ethical duties there can be merit only but no guilt.
With regard to juridical duties there can be guilt only but no merit: Hence in the former
case only good, the latter case only evil consequences are imputed.
124
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
question of how to deal with perfect moral duties that fall outside the scope
of the law. As Kants principles of imputation depend on the coercive nature
of juridical duties it is not easy to see how this can be done. In fact, it is
difcult to see how there could be room for such duties in the overall frame-
work of the Metaphysics of Moralsat all.
27
Kants theory of imputation is just one
particular instance of a much deeper problem.
28
27. Cf. Hill, Kant on Responsibility for Consequences, p. 157; but Hill, like Reath, then extends
his discussion of negative consequences to cases of morally impermissible acts that are not illegal.
28. Thanks are due to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), which provided me
with a perfect research environment to revise and rewrite this paper in the autumn of 2007.