The Problem of the Highest Good: Kant and Hope in the Age of Environmental Collapse

Abstract

This dissertation explores the origins of a pessimistic strand in Kant’s ethical thought and uses it as a lens for understanding contemporary environmental issues. Kant’s ethics is riven by the inevitability of clashes between moral obligations and material desires. The joint achievement moral rectitude and material well-being would be, in Kant’s view, the highest good for a human being. That these two desiderata not infrequently conflict with one another opens a breach at the heart of human practical life, which I designate the “problem of the highest good.” I argue that as the present era—of looming environmental catastrophe and its associated material and moral harms—is a consequence of the aggregate human pursuit of happiness, we can characterize this moment as an instance of the problem of the highest good.

I show how Kant’s engagement with the philosophical history of this perennial moral problem shaped his ethical theory, and that the fundamentally problematic nature of the highest good is underappreciated by Kant scholars. This historical work serves in turn to illuminate that the tensions arising between environmental obligations and the necessary exploitation of natural resources for human ends are an instance of an unavoidable and insoluble dilemma. However, viewing environmental issues through the lens of the problem of the highest good carves out a space for hope in spite of pessimism. Acknowledging the unlikelihood of “win-win” scenarios (in which meeting environmental obligations coincides with material benefits) frees us to rethink our conceptions of the good life in light of a rapidly degrading environment.