Robert Spaemann’s critique of Kant is fascinating precisely because it is not a dismissal. He respects Kant as the gatekeeper of modernity but argues that Kant’s gate ultimately leads to a dead end for human identity.
Spaemann essentially tries to "save" the human person from Kant’s abstractions. Spaemann finds Kant’s description of the human subject clinically detached—it splits the rational mind from its own biological reality.
Here is a detailed overview of Spaemann’s main arguments against Kant, structured by his key concerns: Ethics, Ontology, and Teleology.
Spaemann’s most famous critique—articulated in Happiness and Benevolence—is that Kant made a fatal error by severing the link between morality and happiness (eudaimonia).
The Problem of "Pure" Duty: Kant argues that for an action to be moral, it must be done from duty alone, free from "pathological" (emotional/physical) inclinations. Spaemann counters that this creates a schizophrenic moral psychology. He argues that we cannot even conceive of a "good will" without reference to a "good life."
The Paradox of Benevolence: Spaemann points out a contradiction in Kant’s imperative to "promote the happiness of others." If happiness is irrelevant to my moral status (and is merely a "natural" inclination), why does it suddenly become a moral duty to secure it for someone else? Spaemann argues that unless we view happiness as objectively valuable and structurally linked to human flourishing (teleology), benevolence becomes an empty, abstract command.
The Psychotherapeutic Angle: Kant demands we treat our own desires as alien to our moral core. Spaemann argues this is dehumanizing. He rehabilitates "inclination," suggesting that a fully integrated person does not repress their nature to follow a rule, but rather educates their nature so that their desires align with the Good.
This is perhaps Spaemann’s most significant contribution, found in his book Persons. He argues that Kant helped replace the concrete "Person" with the abstract "Subject."
Someone vs. Something: Spaemann argues that Kant’s focus on qualities (rationality, self-consciousness) turns personhood into an achievement rather than a status. For Kant, you are a "person" because you have the capacity for rational agency.
The Danger of Potentiality: Spaemann notes the danger here: If personhood depends on the actualization of reason, what happens to the sleeping, the comatose, the infant, or the senile? Under a strict Kantian/Lockean view, their personhood is precarious. Spaemann argues that personhood is an ontological standing—you are a "someone" from the beginning, regardless of whether your rational faculties are currently online.
The Transcendence of the Self: Kant sees the "I" as a transcendental unity of apperception—a logical necessity to hold experiences together. Spaemann counters that the "I" is a living, breathing reality. The person "has" a nature, but "is" a someone. We stand in relation to our nature, but we are not separate from it.
In the Critique of Judgment, Kant argues that we can look at nature as if it had a purpose (teleology), but we must admit this is just a "regulative idea" of our mind, not a fact about reality. Spaemann attacks this distinction directly.
Anthropomorphism is Valid: Kant dismisses teleology as anthropomorphism (projecting human purpose onto biology). Spaemann executes a brilliant reversal: He argues that because we are part of nature, our internal experience of purpose is actually our best window into what nature is. To deny teleology is to make ourselves strangers in the universe.
Reality, not Projection: Spaemann insists that living things are truly teleological. A heart is not just a pump interpreted by us as having a function; it is an organ for pumping blood. By reducing this to an "as-if" mental game, Kant creates a dualism where the world is just dead mechanism and meaning exists only in the human mind. Spaemann thinks this leads to nihilism.
Spaemann views Kant’s philosophy as a "hostile takeover" of reality by the mind.
Kant says: The mind imposes order and laws onto a chaotic, dumb nature.
Spaemann says: The mind discovers the order and reason that is already latent in nature.
For Spaemann, we are not lonely rational ghosts trapped in a machine (Kant); we are "nature’s awake-being." We are the part of the universe that has woken up to itself.