ABSTRACT
Immanuel Kant claims the predisposition to humanity, like animality, constitutes a kind of self-love. Like animality, humanity constitutes a new practical subject; a new self corresponding to a new kind of motivation directed toward a new object, or kind of well-being. The characteristic motivation of the animal is based in pleasure and pain, as determined by the laws of nature. Personality sets the stage on which humanity and animality can appear; but if they were not to appear the moral self would have no content. There is room in Kant for humans who are not persons; for creatures possessed of a social conception of the self, and some sense of pride and shame, but who are not autonomous, and hence not morally responsible for their actions. When Kant introduces the propensity to evil, one definition he gives of a propensity is as “only the predisposition to desire an enjoyment which, when subject has experienced it, arouses inclination to it.”
