Kant’s ethics is traditionally portrayed as unequivocal on one issue: natural drives, including feelings, emotions, and inclinations, are intrinsically at odds with morality. However, this does not entail that there is no moral role for them in Kant’s ethics. For instance, he writes ‘while it is not in itself a duty to share the sufferings (as well the joys) of others, it is a duty to sympathize actively in their fate’ [6:456–7].This statement is not only in conflict with traditional portrayals of his ethics, but more importantly it may seem surprising for Kantian morality to endorse the claim that we have duties, albeit indirect, to cultivate feelings of sympathy in order to use them as a means to moral ends. The aim of this chapter is to spell out and defend the claim that the cultivation of certain emotions is one of our moral duties.
Visualizing the Railway Space in Fontane’s Effi Briest