Deontological Eudaemonism

Keith Bustos

Introduction

Kant and Aristotle have historically been understood to have radically opposing views on a
variety of perspectives. I intend to demonstrate that these two philosophic giants have a
strikingly similar understanding of what it takes to achieve true happiness (Happiness). For
example, both Kant and Aristotle understood that the perfection of one’s reason is a necessary
condition for achieving the highest good. However, for both, the perfection of one’s reason is not
a sufficient condition for the realization of Happiness or Eudaemonia, but it does provide a
condition in which Happiness/Eudaemonia may supervene on the act(s) of perfecting one’s
reason. For Aristotle, aiming at the Good specific to humans (i.e. the perfection of reason) is
merely a dictate of practical reason, and the cause of people’s failure to achieve this goal is their
lack of discipline to perfect the requisite virtues. Similarly, Kant believed that we have a duty,
which is a dictate of practical reason, to perfect our personal good-will, which also requires a
disciplined approach. An imperative that the good-will issues, according to Kant, is to seek one’s
own morally deserved happiness so as to ensure that one remains content in doing one’s duty.
Herein lays the foundation for our duty to be Happy: one has a categorical duty to perfect one’s
good-will, which (subsequently) makes one deserving of Happiness. Moreover, the route taken
to achieve this morally deserved Happiness (espoused by Kant) is strikingly similar to Aristotle’s
plan for attaining Eudaemonia.
This essay will build upon the core ideas of Immanuel Kant and Aristotle while paying
particular attention to the relationship between virtue and Happiness.1 It will be shown that Kant
and Aristotle both believed that virtue is a necessary part of Happiness, but Happiness does not
necessarily result from virtue. In order to achieve Happiness, one must relinquish the goal of
sating every capricious desire in lieu of the loftier goal of personal excellence. By weaving
Kantian deontology with Aristotelian eudaemonism, a new perspective arises: deontological
eudaemonism. Essentially, deontological eudaemonism suggests that all rational beings have the
ability to recognize the moral law and thus have the duty to employ their reason in such a way as
to develop a good-will, which requires the virtue of willingly placing limitations on one’s
conditioned happiness; and through becoming a morally virtuous person, one paradoxically
enjoys the supervenient result of true Happiness.
A brief sketch of the landscape may be helpful. I will first discuss both Kant’s and
Aristotle’s respective positions on teleology, virtue, duty, and Happiness/Eudaemonia. Once both
positions are examined separately, I will survey the terrain of both camps to find a suitable
location upon which to erect a bridge that will unite the two seemingly contradictory
perspectives on happiness.

Deontology

In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant says that in living organisms,
every organ is designed to carry out a specific function (or set of functions). Reason is the organ
in rational beings that controls voluntary action. If, in fact, reason and the will were given to
rational beings for their pursuit of happiness, then nature has “hit on a very bad arrangement by

1
For the purpose of simplicity, I will conflate Kant’s notion of happiness and eudaemonia by referring to both as
“Happiness”.

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choosing reason in the creature to carry out this purpose.”2 Since reason is insufficient for the
teleological pursuit of happiness, it must have some other application that is more suited to its
capacity. Kant believed the application most appropriate for reason to be the development of a
good-will – not as a means to an end but as an end in itself.3
Kant claimed that reason has two primary functions: 1) to create a will that is good in
itself (an unconditioned good) and 2) to secure an agent’s own happiness (a subjectively
conditioned good).4 Here we can see that there are two paths that a rational agent can take: he
can renounce his pursuit of his conditioned happiness for the pursuit of an absolutely good-will
or he can directly pursue his individual, conditioned happiness through prudent calculation and
the fulfillment of his inclinations. Kant believed that rational agents have a duty to subordinate
the latter (conditioned good) to the former (unconditioned good), and thereby find themselves
content with cultivating their reason through the production of a good-will. Kant made this claim
because he thought that even by traveling the path that leads to conditioned happiness one may
haphazardly act in accord with moral principles. But actions aimed at conditioned happiness
cannot be considered moral, since the agent has not intentionally chosen such actions for the sake
of producing a good-will. The only actions that have any real moral worth are those that aim at
producing a good-will, which are governed by principles derived from the moral law and not
from principles that are merely in agreement with it.
Kant says that “the cultivation of reason which is required for the first and unconditioned
purpose may in many ways, at least in this life, restrict the attainment of the second purpose –
namely happiness – which is always conditioned.”5 He reinforces this statement by saying that
the good-will “must be the highest good and the condition of all the rest, even of all our demands
for happiness.”6 By developing a good-will, one has a source for providing principles of action
that are not contingently based and are free from all inclination. Kant warns that deriving moral
principles from mere experience will lead to a heteronymous sort of morality from which one
can never reasonably hope to deserve to be happy. He poetically explains:

…human reason in its weariness is fain to rest upon this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions
(which lead it to embrace a cloud in mistake for Juno) to foist into the place of morality some
misbegotten mongrel patched up from limbs of very varied ancestry and looking like anything
you please, only not like virtue, to him who has once beheld her in her true shape. 7

The development of an absolute good-will is nothing more than acting on principles that are
derived from the moral law. Kant considers that the correct use of reason is to seek virtue “in her
true shape” by subordinating the conditioned good (sensuous inclinations or self-love) to the
unconditioned good (reverence for the moral law through the manifestation of a good-will).
In striving to act virtuously, one also necessarily attempts to act morally.8 Kant says that
“morality is the only condition under which a rational being can be an end in himself…therefore

2
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964),
63.
3
Ibid., 64.
4
Ibid., 18.
5
Ibid., 64.
6
Ibid., 64.
7
Ibid., 94. To hold virtue in her true shape is to see morality distilled from sensuous inclinations or self-love.
8
Both Kant and H.J. Patton equate morality and virtue as seen in the following two quotations. “What is then that
entitles a morally good attitude of mind – or virtue – to make claims so high?” Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic
of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), 103. “Morality or virtue – and humanity

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morality, and humanity so far as it is capable of morality, is the only thing which has dignity.” 9
For a thing to have dignity is for it to be irreplaceable, which is to say that it has intrinsic value.
One’s dignity is grounded in the capacity to act morally, which requires an absolute good-will.
This means that the maxims of one’s actions, “when made into a universal law, can never be in
conflict.”10 For one to be assured that one’s maxims never conflict with one another, one merely
has to apply the formula of the Categorical Imperative (C.I.) to every situation for action. In one
of many articulations of the C.I., Kant wrote that we ought to “act on that maxim which can at
the same time have for its object itself as a universal law of nature…It is precisely the fitness of
[one’s] maxims to make universal law that marks [one] out as an end in [oneself].”11 Thus,
according to Kant, “morality lies in the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will – that is, to
a possible making of universal law by means of its maxims,”12 and reverence for the law “is the
motive which can give an action moral worth.”13 So, to act virtuously is to willingly assert
control over one’s passionate inclinations and subordinate them to the development of a good-
will; doing so requires the application of the supreme principle of autonomy (i.e. the C.I.) and
thus one arrives at moral principles for action.
This sketch of Kant’s moral position provides a look at the deontological foundation
from which he is able to support the attainment of one’s own happiness.14 Consequently, the
only sort of happiness that one can truly deserve is a sort that is conditioned by the good-will,
which is the indispensable condition for our worthiness to be happy. 15 This qualification points
to the fact that one’s worthiness to be happy is found only in virtuous action, which, incidentally,
is the willful act of surrendering one’s conditioned good in order to strive for the unconditioned
good.16 So, it is only in first seeking to develop a good-will that we can ever deserve to be truly
happy.
Kant is not completely satisfied in stating the conditions for achieving the highest good in
a positive way. He sees it necessary to caution his readers about the pitfall of allowing oneself to
cultivate reason in such a way that it aims directly at enjoying life and happiness, for in so doing
we distance ourselves from true contentment.17 He writes,

…the cultivation of reason which is required for the first and unconditioned purpose may in many
ways at least in this life, restrict the attainment of the second purpose – namely, happiness –
which is always conditioned; and indeed that it can even reduce happiness to less than zero
without nature proceeding contrary to its purpose; for reason, which recognizes as its highest
practical function the establishment of a good-will, in attaining this end is capable only of its own
peculiar kind of contentment – contentment in fulfilling a purpose which in turn is determined by
reason alone, even if this fulfillment should often involve interference with the purpose of
inclinations.18

so far as it is capable of morality – alone has dignity” Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J.
Paton (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), 36.
9
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964),
102.
10
Ibid., 104.
11
Ibid., 105.
12
Ibid., 107.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., 67.
15
Ibid., 61.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., 62-63.
18
Ibid., 64.

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Kant sincerely wants his readers to understand at the outset that seeking the fulfillment of
inclinations cannot be the primary aim for humans. Instead, the primary aim must be the
development of a good-will which is the only unconditioned good and the condition for all other
goods, “even of all our demands for happiness.”19 So, Kant claims that in doing one’s duty one
can be truly content with one’s efforts and only through meeting this requisite criterion can one
reasonably hope to be happy.

Eudaemonism

At the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that “the Good is that at which all
things aim.”20 This statement alludes to Aristotle’s teleology, which supports the position that the
ultimate good for all things accords with the thing’s unique faculties or endowments. According
to Aristotle, the Good for humans is Happiness and “we always choose it [Happiness] for its own
sake and never as a means to something else…but we also choose them [other actions] for the
sake of happiness, in the belief that they will be means to our securing it.”21 If all actions are
chosen for the sake of Happiness, and nothing can be added or subtracted from Happiness to
make it more desirable, then Happiness is the final good. From this, Aristotle concludes that
Happiness “is the End at which all actions aim” since it is something final and self-sufficient.22
Aristotle is careful to define his conception of Eudaemonia (true happiness) in such a
way as to distinguish it from other sorts of happiness. He says that Eudaemonia is not merely
some characteristic of a person, for then one could be happy while in a life long slumber. Instead,
it is a virtuous activity that is done for its own sake and not for the sake of some further end.23
Moreover, Eudaemonia is an activity in accordance with the highest virtue that humans
possess.24 This supreme virtue is an act that accords with the intellect, which is the most divine
part of humans; and to perfect this virtue is to participate in the world of the divine, through
contemplation. Contemplation is the only human activity that can be engaged in indefinitely and
is self-sufficient. Also, contemplation is chosen for its own sake since it produces nothing more
than the act itself.
However, the contemplative life is one that is beyond the realm of human attainment.
That is to say, “not in virtue of his humanity will a man achieve it, but in virtue of something
within him that is divine; and by as much as this something is superior to his composite nature,
by so much is its activity superior to the exercise of the other forms of virtue.” 25 Thus,
contemplation is the Good at which all humans aim; it is complete eudaemonia since it is chosen
for its own sake, is self-sufficient, and the most divine activity in which humans can participate.
Aristotle exposes a distinction between what he calls secondary and complete
eudaemonia. On the one hand, “The life of moral virtue…is happy only in a secondary degree.
For the moral activities are purely human…” in that they deal with what is due to our fellows in

19
Ibid.
20
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H Rackham (London, England: Harvard University Press, 1934), 3.
21
Ibid., 27-29.
22
Ibid., 31.
23
Ibid., 607.
24
Ibid., 613.
25
Ibid., 617.

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contracts, services, other various social actions, and in our emotions.26 So, moral virtue is
concerned mainly with guiding human action to arrive at the mean between excess and
deficiency, i.e. moral virtues help us to act well in our daily affairs. The goal of moral virtue is to
attain moral excellence, which is a kind of happiness.
In contrast, the Good which Aristotle calls complete eudaemonia is the intellectual act of
contemplation. The highest human virtue deals with “the divinest part of us,” which is the
intellect.27 Since contemplation is the primary object of the intellect, Aristotle concludes that
Happiness consists in contemplation, because it “is at once the highest form of activity (since the
intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects with which the intellect deals are the highest
things that can be known)….”28

Building the Bridge

In a general way, it can now be said that Kant and Aristotle agree in their claims that all things,
including rational agents, aim at the Good. At first glance, Kant seems to disagree with Aristotle
as to what precisely constitutes the Good for rational beings. However, it will be demonstrated
that an agreement actually does exist. The remainder of this essay will be devoted to surveying
the topography of both Kant and Aristotle’s arguments in order to establish a fitting place for a
bridge. That point is found at the concept of the highest good: on the one side, Kant’s belief that
the perfection of practical reason is absolutely necessary for the worthiness to be happy; and on
the other, Aristotle’s understanding that perfecting one’s intellectual virtues is an indispensable
aspect of the contemplative life, and a requisite component of complete eudaemonia.
For Kant, practical reason aims at bringing about (or creating) an object; it is a form of
creative reason. Kant distinguishes three aspects of Practical Reason. First, practical reason – as
skill, techne, craft – helps us to match means to ends. This sort of practical reason assists us in
solving subjective problems, and any imperatives that are issued from this sort of practical
reason are hypothetical imperatives. Second, practical reason issues in councils of prudence for
the goal of happiness (at which all humans aim); these are rules that help each individual attain
conditioned happiness. Again, any imperatives issued from this sort of practical reason are
purely hypothetical. In the Groundwork,29 Kant clearly condemns Aristotle’s position on
eudaemian by showing that Aristotle has happiness as the object of his will. Moreover, Kant
believes the moral principles that Aristotle derives from this are based merely on experience:
offering no sound principles by which he is able to decide with complete certainty what will
make him truly happy.30 Finally, practical reason issues categorical imperatives that are not
based on empirical grounds and are derived from the formal structure of practical reason or the
moral law. Even though the former two sorts of practical reason are not, by themselves,
conducive to leading a moral life, the full development of practical reason must include the
perfection of all three forms. However, the third form must always remain superior in order to

26
Ibid., 619.
27
Ibid., 613.
28
Ibid.
29
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964),
82-87.
30
Ibid., 85-86.

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lead a life of moral worth. And leading a life in accord with principles derived from the moral
law is the only sufficient condition for our worthiness to be happy.
Although Kant is attempting to distance himself from Aristotle’s position, it seems that
he is not giving Aristotle a fair interpretation. The possible reason for not giving Aristotle his due
may be because Kant attempted to create a Copernican revolution in ethics by grounding
morality in a transcendent reality free from the determinate laws of nature. If he described
Aristotle as much more a friend than a foe, he would effectively be admitting that his own
project was nothing new. Now this may be an unfair treatment of Kant’s quick dismissal of
Aristotle’s ethics, but it is helpful to examine Aristotle’s conception of practical reason (or
practical wisdom) to see if Kant’s view actually is divergent from Aristotle’s.
Aristotle has a conception of the distinction between practical wisdom and philosophical
wisdom that is similar to Kant’s. Practical wisdom is associated with the moral virtues, which are
connected with the passions, and issues principles that guide one’s pursuit of acting and living
well. Philosophical wisdom, on the other hand, is associated with the intellectual virtues and
functions primarily for the operation of understanding (contemplation). Remember that Aristotle
distinguishes between two sorts of eudaemonia. Virtuous living constitutes secondary
eudaemonia, since it deals primarily with striking a mean between excess and deficiency in all
functions of life – this is a purely human sort of happiness. This purely human happiness seems
to be that which Kant was condemning as a proper object of the will, since achieving this sort of
happiness requires an intimate understanding of the empirical world. But Aristotle didn’t
advocate for secondary eudaemonia. Instead, he believed that we all desire to transcend the mere
human happiness by participating in the divine. In so doing one must perfect the highest thing in
us, the intellect, which allows us to engage in the activity of contemplation; and this is complete
eudaemonia.
Now it seems that we have hit solid ground upon which the footing for our bridge can be
constructed. This footing manifests itself as the agreement between Kant and Aristotle as to what
the highest good consists of, namely the activity of our rational intellect. The agreement here is
between Kant’s conception of Happiness as being dependent upon the perfection of practical
reason and Aristotle’s notion of complete eudaemonia as a perfection of the intellectual virtues
so that one may participate in the divine activity of contemplation. Both are sought for their own
sake, not as a means to some other end, but as ends in themselves; thereby constituting the
highest good.
Now that the foundation has been set, the remainder of the bridge can be completed. Kant
can be interpreted as not being far removed from Aristotle when examining Kant’s notion of
moral motivation. Kant believes that to act from duty is to act from the respect for the moral law.
The moral law in this case is merely the object of respect and not its cause. This sort of respect
for the moral law is a feeling; and since it is a feeling, it has the power to motivate. The move
that Kant is making here is vital to his overall project, since he has to account for the intrinsic
motivating force of moral imperatives. Moral imperatives arise from ourselves (practical reason)
and are binding on us. From this process arises the feeling of respect which provides the
motivation to follow moral imperatives. Put differently, practical reason creates objects for itself.
Kant presupposes that humans desire to create a concept of ourselves as rational, moral, duty-
bound creatures that are in some ways similar to God. In directly desiring such objects, we desire
to order our lives to meet this conception we have created for ourselves. This psychological
phenomena stands as a description for the mechanism that creates the motivation (or desire) to

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bring our subjective obstacles in line with God, i.e., the desire to be unobstructed when acting
from the moral law.
Here, it looks like Kant is admitting that although humans ought to first desire to develop
a will that is good in itself, he realizes that we must first construct a conception of our individual
selves as being the sort of people who willingly and unhesitatingly embrace our moral duties. If
this account is correct, then it’s difficult to see the vast difference between constructing a concept
of ourselves as undeviating moral agents and setting for ourselves the object of perfecting the
intellectual virtues so as to participate in complete eudaemonia. It seems that on both accounts
one must first understand what the highest good is, then construct a conception of oneself as a
person who acts in accordance with the principles of the highest good, and finally one must
desire to actualize this constructed conception of oneself.
Also, both Kant and Aristotle believe that the virtuous life is a pleasant life. Aristotle is
fairly explicit about this throughout his discussion of virtue and explains that the life of virtue is
the most pleasant life. Contrary to popularly held positions, Kant agreed with Aristotle on this
point but seems to have kept this notion under wraps until he felt that his audience had received
an authentic taste of what should constitute virtue. Many times Kant is interpreted as an ascetic,
but in fact, he sees that pleasure is a necessary component of the virtuous life, for pleasure is
what motivates one to continue to do one’s duty.

But what we do cheerlessly and merely as compulsory service has no intrinsic value for us, and so
also if we attend to our duty in this way; we do not love it but rather shirk as much as we can the
occasion for practicing it….Hence the training (discipline) which man exercises on himself can
become meritorious and exemplary only by the cheerfulness that accompanies it. 31

Consequently, Kant does allow for a morally acceptable sort of pleasure to accompany a virtuous
life.
Finally, my interpretation of Kant and Aristotle suggests that they both agreed that the
perfection of practical reason (or the intellectual virtues for Aristotle) is not by itself sufficient
for Happiness. However, some may contend that there is actually a latent disagreement lurking in
their respective conceptions of Happiness. For Aristotle the attainment of complete eudaemonia
involves not only the perfection of one’s reason but also contingent external goods such as good
health, luck, material goods, etc. Although Aristotle maintained that the perfection of practical
reason necessarily involves doing many things well and succeeding in many areas of practical
life, the perfection of practical reason will constitute a good bit of Happiness. Conversely, Kant
believed that there is no reason to think that the person of good-will necessarily will succeed in
any of life's endeavors, for what is key to having a good-will is not that one succeeds in acting in
various ways, but rather that one acts in conformity with, and ultimately from, a set of universal
moral principles.
The following elucidation of Kant’s conception of Happiness may help to clear things up.
He explains that not everyone is worthy of being Happy even though they all desire to be so.

Now the force in you that strives only toward happiness is inclination; but the power that limits
your inclination to the condition of your first being worthy of happiness is your reason; and your
power to restrain and overcome your inclination by your reason is the freedom of your will.32

31
Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 158-
160.
32
Ibid., 154.

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This point is very important for Kant and he drives it home by explaining that the instructions for
becoming Happy, in a morally acceptable way, are found in reason alone. As a result, the
fulfillment of one’s duty is the sole condition of one’s worthiness to be Happy. Nevertheless,
merely meeting the requirements for a worthiness to be Happy does not necessarily mean that
one actually will be Happy. Doing one’s duty merely gives one a reason to hope that Happiness
will be realized during an earthly life.33
In summary, Kant and Aristotle agree that the perfection of one’s reason is the highest
good. Kant considers this to be the highest good because it aids in the development of a good-
will, which is the only unconditioned good in the universe. Aristotle deems this to be the highest
good because it allows one to transcend one’s mere humanity and participate in the divine. Both
believe that in order to achieve Happiness, one must necessarily perfect one’s reason; this gives
rise to a position that bridges Kant’s deontology and Aristotle’s eudaemonism. As a result,
deontological eudaemonism asserts that one has a duty to perfect one’s reason so as to develop a
good-will, which prescribes for itself a duty to act virtuously. Through incessantly embracing
one’s duty one becomes content and, consequently, one can reasonably hope to achieve true
Happiness through striving to live a morally worthy life, which includes a degree of pleasure.

33
This rational hope is grounded in a belief that the world is rationally ordered by its creator and that as long as one
does not become unworthy of happiness through the transgression of one’s duty, one can rationally hope that
happiness will supervene on one’s dutiful life. Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 153-156.