Thinking about Kant

A first year lecture this morning on Kant's Groundwork ... actions done for the sake of duty ... actions done out of inclination lack moral worth even if the inclinations are towards sympathy or benevolence ... the problem is the assumption that one's inclinations are determined whereas the rational will is 'free'. But that concept of freedom is problematic, is too indeterministic and one's inclinations can be altered, strengthened or undermined. I wrote about this years ago in a paper called 'Moral Sentiments, Social Exclusion, Aesthetic Education' but it is often hard to recall what one's own position is, one has to work it all out all over again, start from scratch: I wrote some verse about this experience, put in the mouth of Socrates:

Thought is painful again and difficult
The material unyielding and unpromising

But better to say I've lost my way
Or that walls or undergrowth

And other obstructions on the path
Or the moonless night

Or a trackless landscape
—Let my dreams decide—

Bar my way or obscure my vision
Or leave me without a road

They don't know how confused
Agony and paralysis of mind

To be endured, suffered patiently
—And sometimes I endure, sometimes

I am hopeless like a patient bullock
That strains to the sting of his driver's goad—

Without clarity or focus or direction
As half-discerned a pattern’s shimmer fails

Not my choice the moment when it lifts
My condition of stupidity

In a spurt of excitement and speed of thought
Surge and surprise of connections

Then familiar ground, eerie memory:
Not an inch further than before

And only now does thinking start
Again creeping slowly forwards

But with such a calm of mind
Noticing everything

Effort precedes and follows
The brief freedom of vision

The vivid effortless moments they all praise
The commanding view from the tower

Where visiting is restricted
To a few, unannounced, summer days