Developing the Moral Motive: Comparing Kant's Treatments of Love in the Second _Critique_ and the _Doctrine of Virtue_

In this paper, I consider Kant’s attitude toward the development of the moral motive from one of respect into one of love. In the second Critique, Kant discourages the thought of doing our duty gladly out of love, because this obscures the important idea that the moral law applies to us whether we like it or not. But in the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant thinks that a developed disposition of love is important for explaining how we are moved by concepts of duty. I link these different treatments to the different moral psychological stories Kant has to tell in the second Critique and the Doctrine of Virtue: the fundamental motive of respect for the moral law explains how we can decide between the nonmoral and the moral in general, but we need more specific motives to explain decisions between different moral courses of action in the realm of imperfect duty.