At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference
in 2025, a Hindu religious artist whose Hindu name is Srimati Syamarani, spoke
on the art of spiritual life. A person is like the hand of Krishna. The hand
puts food in Krishna’s body, so the entire body is nourished. The hand serving
the body is a duty. So too is following the type of bhukti that is
following rules and regulations out of duty. At some point, it will no longer
be felt as a duty. In Kantian terms, this means not acting ethically by being
compelled by reason—the necessity of the moral law that reason presents to us;
rather, going beyond moral duty is to approximate the holy will, but not
because it is the nature of finite rational beings to be good; rather,
it is out of love of the moral law, including its necessitating us to act
ethically. In bhukti devotion, however, it is not love of the form of
moral law (i.e., it being an imperative, or command, of reason) that obviates the
sense of duty to serve Krishna and other people, as in being a hand of Krishna
serves Krishna’s body; rather, it is love directed to Krishna (and ensuing compassion
to people) that transcends ethical obligation per se. This is not to say that bhukti
practice can go beyond feeling obligated due to a feeling, whereas it is by
the use of reason that Kantian gets beyond duty, for it is the feeling of
respect that empirically motivates a person to treat people as not only means
to one’s own goals, but also as ends in themselves. As rational beings, we
partake in reasoning, albeit in a finite way, and reason itself has absolute
value because it is by reason that value is assigned to things. Even so, it
cannot be said that a devotee of Krishna in Hinduism can go beyond acting out
of duty due to an emotion (i.e.., love or compassion) whereas for Kant it is
just by reasoning that a person can go beyond acting because one is duty-bound.
To Kant, acting out of a maxim, which
is simply a reason for doing something, that includes a desire for an empirical
object is lower than having as a reason, acting out of the moral law. Material
principles presuppose an object of desire. Getting that object is a condition
of having the subjective, material principle. Kant didn’t want a material maxim,
such as the desire for one’s own happiness, not to mention wealth, to have
anything to do with the moral law. A material maxim cannot furnish the content
of a moral law. “All practical principles that presuppose an object (matter) of
the faculty of desire as the determining ground of the will are, without
exception, empirical and can furnish no practical laws.”[1]
A moral law, which is practical in that it relates to actions rather than, say,
metaphysics, cannot be oriented to getting something that is desired. Not even the
desire to be happy can be admitted to a moral law. “All material practical
principles as such are, without exception, of one and the same kind and come
under the general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness.”[2]
Even though self-love, unlike self-conceit, is constrained by moral law, self-love
is sordid in that it can be the basis of a reason for doing something (i.e., a
maxim) that is connected with a desire for something. Additionally, Kant maintains
that “(t)he maxim of self-love (prudence) merely advises,” whereas “the
law of morality commands. . . . there is a great difference between which we
are advised to do and that to which we are obliged.”[3]
In short, being motivated by self-love is not strong enough to get us to act
morally. It is the form of a moral law, specifically as a command by
reason, that turns out to be crucial in us, who have other inclinations, to be
moral agents.
Even enjoying doing your duty is
a material practical principle because such a motive is empirical in nature,
whereas being motivated to act because of the form of the moral law is not a
material principle. The holy will of an infinite being can only be approximated
by finite rational beings by trying to extirpate material desires (i.e., trying
to rid oneself of all inclinations). But we can’t do that completely. Even so,
we can be morally good agents because we can feel obligated to do something out
of duty; we know we can be ethical because we are obligated. That is to say, we
can be moved to do something just because it is our duty. Moral goodness is only
possible for finite rational beings; if we were infinite, we wouldn’t be
morally good—we would be good because that would be our nature. A fully
rational agent would just do as a matter of its nature what it ought to do, so
doing so would not even be thought of or felt as a duty. In bhukti,
Krishna does not feel obliged to act ethically; rather, the deity does so out
of compassion, which is the deity’s nature.
To Kant, Love
and benevolence are a matter of duty to for finite beings such as us. In
contrast, pathological love is from an inclination and thus cannot be a duty. Practical love is the duty to make the
following maxim: acting for others’ state rather than one’s own as a reason for
doing something. Even though for Kant self-love is subject to the moral law
(whereas self-conceit is not), it seems to me that the maxim of love and
benevolence is difficult to reconcile with the idea that self-love is confined
by the moral law. I think Kant’s desire to distinguish self-love from self-conceit
is responsible for his over-estimation of self-love normatively (i.e., as a
good thing).
Also,
whereas love and benevolence are salient in bhukti devotion and the
devotee’s interpersonal relations, for Kant, practical love can’t be the sole
motive in acting on a moral duty because but there cannot be a duty to have a
feeling. “If a rational being is to think of his maxims as practical universal
laws, he can think of them only as principles that contain the determining
ground of the will not by their matter but only by their form.”[4]
The moral law has the form of an imperative by the nature of law itself, as
necessitated by reason. Necessitation is the process by which a finite rational
being brings oneself to do what one ought to do by what one takes as a command
of reason to do. Necessitation is a psyche process in the phenomenal realm
(i.e., of appearances) that is empirically motivated by means of the feeling of
respect. But this is only empirically so; a priori (i.e., apart from
experience), it is the duty itself that motivates us. Think of reason as
commanding you. A person follows the command by being motivated by a feeling of
respect for the moral law itself. It is precisely that feeling that can obviate
the sense of duty itself; even though our nature, unlike Krishna’s or God’s, is
not goodness itself (omnibenevolence), we can get beyond feeling obligated to
act according to the duty required by reason and motivated by respect for other
people as ends in themselves (because they too are rational beings). With
sufficient respect for the form (i.e., imperative) of moral law itself, a
person can act morally not out of a sense of duty.
In her
talk, Srimati Syamarani spoke of following the rules and regulations first as
her duty, but then out of love for Krishna. In contrast, Kant claims that love
cannot be the sole motive for acting morally, whether out of duty or not.
Respect for the imperative of reason itself in its capacity as a moral
law-giver is very different than the love that a devotee directs to a deity,
and yet these two ways can get finite moral agents acting morally and yet not
out of a sense of duty.
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.,
5:36.
4. Ibid., 5:27.
