Immanuel Kant

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Summary

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Philosophy may be divided into three fields: physics (the study of the physical world), ethics (the study of morals), and logic (the study of logical principles). These fields may involve either "empirical" study of our experiences, or "pure" analysis of concepts. "Metaphysics" is the study of pure concepts as they relate to moral or physical experience.

People generally presume that moral principles must apply to all rational beings at all places and all times. Moral principles must therefore be based on concepts of reason, as opposed to particularities of culture or personality. The goal of the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals is to develop a clearer understanding of moral principles, so that people may better avert distractions.

Several general principles about moral duties may be advanced. First, actions are moral if and only if they are undertaken for the sake of morality alone (without any ulterior motive). Second, the moral quality of an action is judged not according to the action's consequences, but according to the motive that produced it. Third, actions are moral if and only if they are undertaken out of respect for the moral law (as opposed to some other motivation such as a need or desire).

Since specific interests, circumstances, and consequences cannot be considered, the moral "law" must be a general formula that is applicable in all situations. Rather than commanding specific actions, it must express the principle that actions should be undertaken with pure motives, without consideration of consequences, and out of pure reverence for the law. The formula that meets these criteria is the following: we should act in such a way that we could want the maxim (the motivating principle) of our action to become a universal law. People have a decent intuitive sense for this law. Still, it is helpful for philosophy to state the law clearly so that people can keep it in mind.

It is nearly impossible to find examples of pure moral actions. Nearly every action we observe can be attributed to some interest or motivation other than pure morality. Yet this should not discourage us, for moral principles come from reason, not from experience. Indeed, moral principles could not come from experience, for all experiences depend on particular circumstances, whereas moral principles must have absolute validity, independent of all circumstances.

Because it applies in all circumstances, reason's fundamental moral principle may be called the "categorical imperative." The categorical imperative may be expressed according to the same formula as the moral law: act only in such a way that you could want the maxim (the motivating principle) of your action to become a universal law. When people violate the categorical imperative, they apply a different standard to their own behavior than they would want applied to everyone else in the form of a universal law. This is a contradiction that violates principles of reason.

The categorical imperative may also be formulated as a requirement that we must not treat other rational beings as mere means to our own purposes. Rational beings have the capacity to pursue predetermined objectives ("ends") by means of their will, yet in pursuing their goals they never think of themselves as mere means to another purpose; they are themselves the purpose of their actions- -they are "ends in themselves. If we treat other rational beings as mere means, we contradict the fact that all rational beings are ends in themselves. In this case, our principles could not be universal laws, and we would violate the categorical imperative.

Another way of stating the point that rational beings are ends in themselves is to say that rational beings are simultaneously the authors and the subjects of the principles they execute through their will. The categorical imperative may also be formulated as a requirement that we act only according to principles that could be laws in a "kingdom of ends"--that is, a legal community in which all rational beings are at once the makers and subjects of all laws.

The argument so far has established what the moral law is, but has not demonstrated why we feel we should be moral. The basis for morality is the concept of freedom. Freedom is the ability to give your own law to your will. When we follow the demands of some need, desire, or circumstance, we are in a state of "heteronomy"; our will is determined by something outside of ourselves. When we follow the categorical imperative and chose maxims that could be universal laws, we are in a state of "autonomy"; we use reason to determine our own law for ourselves. In other words, we are free.

Freedom of the will can never be demonstrated by experience. It is a principle of reason that everything we understand may be explained on the basis of prior conditions. In other words, the world we observe and understand is a world governed by the principle that every event was caused by another event. Yet this world is nothing more than the picture that reason develops in making sense of "appearances." The world of "things in themselves"--the objects underlying appearances--may have different qualities, including freedom of the will. We can have no knowledge of things in themselves. Thus freedom of the will may be neither proven nor disproven. All that we may know is that we have a concept of freedom of the will, and that morality may be based on this concept.

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Overall Analysis and Themes

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Over the course of the Commentary sections on the specific chapters, we have reviewed a number of criticisms of Kant. Some philosophers have argued that in practice our moral beliefs are based on intuitions, not on reason. Hegel pointed out that moral beliefs can never be unconditional because moral questions must be resolved in the context of the society in which we live. ##Nietzsche## argued that reason is not the source of moral freedom, but is rather an impediment to free choice.

The common thread of all these criticisms is that Kant's position is too abstract to be useful. As human beings, we live in a particular place at a particular time. It is not necessarily possible or desirable for us to separate our rationality from the other features of our personality. We may reason about issues in abstract terms, and we may imagine the situations of other people, yet our starting point must always be our own life situation.

It is a typical feature--a common "mistake," if you will--of Enlightenment thinking to presume that we can ignore our own particularities and discover universal principles of reason. This "mistake" may have been possible because Enlightenment philosophers came from a relatively homogeneous culture (that of eighteenth-century Europe) and from a relatively homogeneous class position (one of relative financial security). This homogeneity may have led Enlightenment thinkers to oversimplify certain questions, presuming that their answers were "rational" when they in fact depended on cultural assumptions.

On the other hand, Kant's philosophy--and Enlightenment philosophy in general-- is by no means a philosophy of privilege. Indeed, Kant's ideas are radically egalitarian. According to Kant, moral truths are not received from on high through divine revelation or inspiration. Rather, they are based on reasons that make sense to all people (indeed, all rational beings) who bother to think about them. The passion with which people espouse moral views suggests that many people continue to share Kant's view that moral principles must be absolute and universal. Late twentieth-century people may be more aware of diversity than Kant was. As a result, we may have less confidence than him that what makes sense to us will make sense to other people. Nevertheless, in our day as in Kant's, people do tend to think that there is more to their moral beliefs than mere cultural prejudice.

Like all great philosophers, Kant's arguments have provoked a wide range of responses, positive and negative. Whatever we make of Kant's views, it would be difficult to underestimate the historical impact of his "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy. Even today, nearly two hundred years after his death, Kant's arguments remain a powerful presence in philosophy.

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Preface

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Summary

Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three fields: logic, physics (natural philosophy), and ethics (moral philosophy). This division makes sense: Logic is the study of pure thought, independent of any objects. Physics is the study of how things happen in the world of material objects. Ethics is the study of how things ought to happen in the world of human beings.

Philosophy may also be divided on the basis of whether it is "pure" or "empirical." Pure philosophy deals only with a priori concepts; concepts that occur to us independent of any experience or perception. By contrast, empirical philosophy deals with the objects we experience in the world around us. Logic is pure philosophy as it relates to the formal procedures of thinking. "Metaphysics" is pure philosophy as it applies to our efforts to understand the world. Physics and ethics have both empirical and metaphysical branches.

Our task in this book is to develop a "pure" moral philosophy, a "metaphysics of morals" that relies on the a priori concepts of reason, not on empirical observations. That such a philosophy should be possible is apparent from the fact that we presume that moral obligations are binding not just for particular people in particular circumstances, but rather for all rational beings in all places at all times.

In their daily lives, people must apply moral laws to many different situations and circumstances. Developing a clear understanding of moral principles can help people to keep track of their moral obligations. A clear understanding of morals can also help people to ensure that their motivations are pure. Actions are not truly moral if they only appear to conform to moral law but lack a moral motivation.

The goal of the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals is to establish the "supreme principle of morality." Kant intends to follow this work with a more thorough treatment of moral philosophy. The Grounding is meant to be more accessible than this later work.

Commentary

The distinction that Kant draws in the Preface between "pure" and "empirical" concepts is of critical importance to his philosophy. "Pure" or "a priori" concepts are ideas that occur to us when we think about things in our minds, "prior" to and independent of any experience of how things happen in the world. "Empirical" or "a posteriori" concepts are ideas that we derive from our experience of the world.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued that many of our basic ideas about the world--our notions of time, space, and causation, for instance--are a priori concepts; they are "hardwired" into our brains, rather than extrapolated from our experiences. This argument led him to a number of interesting conclusions about the limits of human understanding and the errors of traditional philosophy (see the Context section for more information on the first Critique). In this book, Kant makes a similar argument about moral philosophy. He identifies the basic principles of moral thinking that occur to us independent of any particular situation or experience, and he offers some criticism of philosophers who have advanced different bases for morality.

Kant argues that his project makes sense in terms of our intuitions about morality. About halfway through the Preface, he claims that when we think about morality, we naturally presume that moral laws must apply to all people at all times. He bases this claim on the notion that moral actions are supposed to be undertaken for the sake of morality alone; we are supposed to have pure (as opposed to self-interested) motivation for moral actions. Yet as soon as particular circumstances enter the picture, it becomes impossible to think of motivations being entirely pure; in any particular situation, human beings will have interests and concerns that form a component of their motivation.

This train of thought leads Kant to the conclusion that a secure understanding of morality must be based on the "pure," a priori concepts of reason. "Pure," a priori concepts are concepts that occur to us before we have any experience of the world. If moral ideas were drawn from experience, then they could not be assured universal validity, for they would be based only on the limited set of events that we have experienced. Moral ideas may be universally valid, Kant argues, only if they are based on the intrinsic validity of a priori concepts.

Kant's distinction between "rational beings" and "men" may make this point more clear. Being a human being entails possessing a certain "human nature." We get hungry, we fall in love, we have emotional and physical needs. In Kant's view, this human nature should not be a consideration in moral thinking. Human nature is a particular circumstance that affects human beings. We could imagine some other form of rational being--an extraterrestrial life form, for instance-- possessing a different nature. But we would not excuse the cruel behavior of some monstrous creature; rather, we would judge the monster's actions according to the same moral standard that we apply to ourselves. According to Kant, this fact demonstrates that our moral thinking is not based on an understanding of "nature" or disposition, but rather on universally applicable concepts--and the only concepts that we can know apply in all circumstances are the concepts that occur to us a priori, independent of any particular experience or circumstance.

You may be thinking at this point that Kant seems to want people to behave like robots. By his account, morality requires us to separate our rationality from our nature and act solely on the basis of logical principles. This idea is strongly rooted in the basic ideas of the Enlightenment (see the Context section for discussion of this period in European intellectual history). Like many of his contemporaries, Kant understands reason to be the source of fundamental truths that transcend culture and history. Rational ideas are ideas that makes sense to all people; they are universal. Kant believes the task of philosophy is to develop a stronger understanding of these ideas. He also believes that rational ideas have a strong claim to authority. A morality based on reason would make sense to all people; Kant thinks it would therefore be superior to a moral system accepted by only one particular group of people.

Critics of Kant have challenged his effort to develop a moral system based exclusively on reason. Some have argued that it is unnatural to reason about morals; in practice, we rely on intuition, rather than analysis, to determine what we feel is the moral course of action. Some have argued that it is impossible to separate rationality from nature and culture; what makes sense to us has a lot to do with ideas and prejudices that we learn from our parents and our communities. Some argue that Kant's idea that we should reason about morals is itself a cultural prejudice that doesn't make sense to people living at other times in other cultures.

On the other hand, we do tend to believe that certain basic moral ideas are based on something more than local cultural prejudice. To pick just one example, many people in the West think that basic human rights should be respected in all societies; according to this view, human rights transcend particular communities and apply in all places at all times. This way of thinking is strongly indebted to Kant and his colleagues in the Enlightenment.

Keep these issues in mind as you advance through the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals and evaluate Kant's argument. In the Preface, the only example Kant gives of a specific moral principle with universal validity is his comment that people should not lie. More examples and definitions about moral principles will follow in later chapters.

Note: Before continuing, a brief comment on Kant's gendered language is in order. In German there are two words corresponding to the English for "man": one for man in the sense of a male adult, and another for man in the sense of "mankind." Kant's use of the latter term is often translated simply as "man" or "men" in English. Arguably, it might be better translated as "human being" or "person." Kant certainly shared in the prejudices of his time regarding the intellectual capacities of women. Nevertheless, his language is not as sexist as it appears in some translations.

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Chapter 1

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Summary

The one thing in the world that is unambiguously good is the "good will." Qualities of character (wit, intelligence, courage, etc.) or qualities of good fortune (wealth, status, good health) may be used to either good or bad purposes. By contrast, a good will is intrinsically good--even if its efforts fail to bring about positive results.

It is a principle of the composition of natural organisms that each of their purposes is served by the organ or faculty most appropriate to that purpose. The highest purposes of each individual are presumably self-preservation and the attainment of happiness. Reason does not appear to be as well suited as instinct for these purposes. Indeed, people with a refined capacity for reason are often less happy than the masses. As a result, refined people often envy the masses, while common people view reason with contempt. The fact is that reason serves purposes that are higher than individual survival and private happiness. Reason's function is to bring about a will that is good in itself, as opposed to good for some particular purpose, such as the attainment of happiness.

The specific obligations of a good will are called "duties." We may make three general propositions about duty. First, actions are genuinely good when they are undertaken for the sake of duty alone. People may act in conformity with duty out of some interest or compulsion other than duty. For instance, a grocer has a duty to offer a fair price to all customers, yet grocers abide by this duty not solely out of a sense of duty, but rather because the competition of other grocers compels them to offer the lowest possible price. Similarly, all people have a duty to help others in distress, yet many people may help others not out of a sense of duty, but rather because it gives them pleasure to spread happiness to other people. A more genuine example of duty would be a person who feels no philanthropic inclination, but who nonetheless works to help others because he or she recognizes that it is a duty to do so.

The second proposition is that actions are judged not according to the purpose they were meant to bring about, but rather by the "maxim" or principle that served as their motivation. This principle is similar to the first. When someone undertakes an action with no other motivation than a sense of duty, they are doing so because they have recognized a moral principle that is valid a priori. By contrast, if they undertake an action in order to bring about a particular result, then they have a motivation beyond mere duty.

The third proposition, also related to the first two, is that duties should be undertaken out of "reverence" for "the law." Any organism can act out of instinct. Chance events could bring about positive results. But only a rational being can recognize a general moral law and act out of respect for it. The "reverence" for law that such a being exhibits (this is explained in Kant's footnote) is not an emotional feeling of respect for the greatness of the law. Rather, it is the moral motivation of a person who recognizes that the law is an imperative of reason that transcends all other concerns and interests.

Since particular circumstances and motivations cannot be brought into the consideration of moral principles, the moral "law" cannot be a specific stipulation to do or not do this or that particular action. Rather, the moral law must be applicable in all situations. Thus the law of morality is that we should act in such a way that we could want the maxim (the motivating principle) of our action to become a universal law.

Giving a false promise is an example of an action that violates this moral law. Some people might reason that they should be permitted to lie in order to escape a difficult situation. Conversely, some people might reason that they should not lie because in doing so they might create still greater difficulties for themselves in the future. In both cases, the motivating consideration is a fear of consequences, not pure respect for duty. Applying the moral law reveals that lying can never be a universal law. If everyone were to give false promises, then there would be no such thing as a promise.

Although most people are not aware of the moral law in any conscious sense, even untrained minds show a remarkable ability to abide by it in practice. People's intuitive sense for theoretical matters is generally poor. By contrast, their intuitions in the field of practical reason--in other words, their intuitions about morality--are generally correct. For instance, people generally recognize that moral concerns should not include physical ("sensuous") motivations. Nevertheless, a philosophical understanding of morals is important, because untrained minds may be deceived and distracted by non-moral needs, concerns, and desires.

Commentary

Since Kant's argument in this chapter is complex, it may be helpful to paraphrase it in a more compressed form. Kant starts from the presumption that an action is moral if and only if it is intrinsically good--good "in itself," as he puts it. This view has two main implications. First, moral actions cannot have impure motivations. Otherwise, the action would be based on some secondary motivation, and not on the intrinsic goodness of the action. Second, moral actions cannot be based on consideration of possible outcomes. Otherwise, the action would not be good in itself, but would instead be good in that it brought about a particular outcome.

If we can consider neither motivating circumstances nor intended outcomes, then we need to find a principle with universal validity--a principle that is valid no matter what issue we are considering. The only principles that fit this criterion are the a priori principles of reason--that is, the principles of logic that we have to follow if our statements are to make sense.

One fundamental principle of logic is the principle of non-contradiction: statements don't make sense if they contradict themselves. Kant's moral law is based on this principle of non-contradiction. In order for your action to be moral, he argues, it must be good in itself. In order for it be good in itself, it must make sense in pure logical terms. In order for it to make sense, it must not contradict itself. If you lie but expect other people to believe you, you contradict yourself. Your motivation lacks universal validity and is therefore immoral.

At the end of the chapter, Kant argues that his analysis of the moral law amounts, in effect, to a formalization of a moral sense that we already use intuitively. He argues that a more conscious understanding of the principles of our moral sense can help us to behave more morally. Given the complexity of his argument, it may seem surprising that he believes he is only teaching us what we already know. His claim may seem less surprising if we recognize that his moral law is fundamentally the same as the Biblical teaching that we should "do unto others as we would have done unto us." Kant argues that we violate rational principles of morality when we contradict ourselves, and that we contradict ourselves when we act in a way that we would not want others to imitate. In practice, his doctrine amounts to a doctrine of respect for others.

The major criticism of Kant's approach is that it is too abstract to be useful. The nineteenth-century philosopher Hegel is generally credited with developing this argument against Kant. Hegel argued that our thinking is structured by the beliefs, institutions, and traditions of the society in which we live. In criticism of Kant, he pointed out that you cannot know what actions will appear self-contradictory to people unless you know something about their society.

Take the prohibition against theft, for example. We live in a world of property. In our world, it is contradictory to steal, because when you steal you expect others to recognize your ownership of what you have stolen even though you failed to respect the ownership of the person who originally possessed it. So far, Kant's analysis holds. Yet we can imagine a world without property rights, a world where everything is collectively owned. In such a world, there would be no such thing as theft because there would be no such thing as personal property.

The same analysis can be applied to nearly every moral principle. In our society, it is unethical to cheat on your spouse, because you contradict yourself when accept the marriage vows of your spouse and yet break those vows yourself. Yet we could imagine a world with different family institutions where affairs might not be considered unethical. Similarly (to use Kant's example), it is unethical in our society to make false promises. In our society, there is such a thing as a promise, and when people make promises we expect that they will keep them. But lying might mean something different in a society with different expectations.

According to Hegel's analysis, Kant is correct to recognize that the principle of non-contradiction is an element in moral thinking, but he is wrong to think that we can develop moral principles without considering the circumstances of our world. Morality is not something for automatons living a life of pure rational thought. It is a consideration for human beings who must sometimes subordinate their personal interests to the basic principles of their community.

In defense of Kant against Hegel, some philosophers (##Kierkegaard##, for instance) have criticized Hegel for overemphasizing the role that social institutions play in forming our beliefs. By some accounts, Kant has the advantageous of allowing us greater freedom in reasoning about which morals make sense to us, independent of the society around us. We will continue to consider this and other views on Kant as we consider his further arguments in Chapters 2 and 3.

As a small side note, it may be of interest to note that Kant wrote the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals over half a century before ##Charles Darwin## formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection. From a modern-day perspective, Kant's statement that an organism's needs are generally served by the most-suited organ might seem a little strange. An evolutionary biologist would say that our organs and faculties have developed over time in order to serve the needs of survival. According to this perspective, we wouldn't have organs or faculties unless they served our survival needs (or had served those needs at some time); the point is that our organs and faculties should work, not that they perform the tasks for which they are best suited. Kant's outdated view of nature is not of critical importance to his argument, however, so this is not a major problem. It may be interesting nonetheless to observe that ideas about instinct and self- preservation were established long before Darwin included them in his theory.

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Chapter 2 - Part 1

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Summary

It is generally recognized that actions are not truly moral if they are performed in conformity with duty but not for the sake of duty alone. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to find examples of actions performed exclusively out of a sense of duty. Nearly every action we observe can be attributed to some motive other than pure duty. Indeed, it is often impossible to know whether even our own true motives are pure.

The lack of examples of pure moral action may seem disheartening. Yet we may take heart in the fact that all rational beings may recognize that reason imposes clear moral demands.

Furthermore, we should recognize that it would be impossible for us to derive universal moral laws from specific events and experiences; since all events are contingent upon specific circumstances, none of our experiences can be a source of moral principles that apply in all cases and all circumstances. Even our idea of God, the perfect being, is not based on experience, but rather on our a priori idea of moral perfection. Developing a clearer understanding of a priori moral concepts can help to reinforce our moral sense against the distractions of competing interests and motivations.

Rational beings may align their "will" either with the objective laws of reason and morality or with subjective needs and interests. Reason's demands may be called "imperatives." "Hypothetical imperatives" command that a particular action is necessary as a means to some purpose, such as the attainment of personal happiness. "Categorical imperatives" command that some action is necessary in and of itself.

Hypothetical imperatives are regular and obvious occurrences. Anytime someone settles upon some purpose or objective, reason may make clear to them what course of action they should pursue. This undertaking is more complicated in the case of indeterminate objectives like happiness, where it is difficult to know what particular actions will bring about the goal. Nevertheless, we have no problem understanding that people have chosen to act in a certain way as a result of a hypothetical imperative.

By contrast, we cannot find evidence for categorical imperatives in the decisions and actions we observe. People may appear to act in a certain way because of a pure demand of reason, yet we can never be sure that they do not have some circumstantial interest or ulterior motive other than a pure categorical imperative. Categorical imperatives must therefore be derived a priori.

Since an imperative with universal and intrinsic validity cannot include any circumstantial considerations, the only possible categorical imperative is that actions must conform to a requirement of universal validity. Thus the categorical imperative may be formulated as follows: act only in such a way that you could want the maxim (the motivating principle) of your action to become a universal law. This statement can also be given this formulation: act as if your action would establish its maxim as a universal law of nature.

Four examples demonstrate how common notions of duty conform to the categorical imperative. First, people have a duty not to commit suicide, because it clearly cannot be a law of nature for all people to kill themselves; if everyone died, nature itself would cease to exist. Second, people have a duty to borrow money only if they have the intention of paying it back, because if everyone failed to pay their debts no one would ever lend money. Third, people have a duty to cultivate their talents, because if everyone spent their life in idleness no one would benefit from human capacities. Fourth, people have a duty to assist others in need, because if all of us were heartless then none of us could find assistance in times of need.

In each of these cases as in all cases where people neglect their duties, individuals are involved in a contradiction: they accept the objective validity of the law, and yet they want an exception to be made for them.

Commentary

Chapter 2 picks up where Chapter 1 left off. Kant again defends his efforts by noting that a clearer understanding of a priori principles can help to strengthen our moral sense. He reiterates that actions are moral if and only if they are performed out of a pure sense of duty. And he again emphasizes that pure moral principles must be grasped a priori.

Kant adds an important new twist to these by now familiar arguments, however. In Chapter 1 Kant argued that only a priori ideas could have the purity and universality that we expect of moral principles. All other ideas, he observed, are dependent on specific circumstances and situations. At the start of Chapter 2 Kant points out an important implication of this analysis: because all actions depend on specific circumstances, it would be impossible for us to derive a priori ideas from examples in our experience.

In order to understand this point, it may be helpful to recall Kant's arguments about causation that were summarized in the Context section. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that it would be impossible for us to derive our notion of causation from our observations of the world. ##David Hume## argued that the notion of a cause- effect relationship is simply a manner of speaking that we use when we talk about events that regularly occur one after another. Kant countered Hume's view by arguing that our notion of causation is too fundamental to be simply a manner of speaking. In Kant's view, causation is an a priori concept; it is an idea that occurs to us automatically whenever we think about the world. Whether we are observing events or imagining possibilities, we cannot help but think in terms of causation.

Recall the analysis of the free will/determinism debate that Kant drew from this account of causation. (This argument will also be presented and discussed in Chapter 3.) Anytime we look around us, Kant argued, we see a world of causes and effects. Anytime we analyze the events in our experience, we will come up with causal explanations for why things happened as they did. But our analyses do not end up this way because the world "really" is deterministic. Rather, the world appears deterministic to us because causation is a fundamental concept of reason. The world as it "really" is could just as well include free agency.

Kant's observations about morality at the start of Chapter 2 are similar to this analysis of free will and causation. When Kant says that universal moral laws cannot be based on experience, he is arguing that our fundamental moral ideas have the same status as fundamental cognitive principles like causation. Just as causation is too fundamental an idea to be based on experience, so are our moral ideas too fundamental to be based on specific examples in our lives. The moral law is an a priori idea, just like causation.

Consequently, our moral principles cannot be based on an analysis of the actions we observe. Whenever we look at people's actions, we will see circumstantial motivations. Just as no evidence can be found for free will, so is it difficult (if not impossible) to find evidence of pure moral motives. But this does not mean that pure moral actions do not exist. The concept of pure moral motivation is an a priori idea. We do not need to refer to examples in our experience to defend our notion that people can and should behave according to pure moral principles. To the contrary, we may develop an a priori understanding of the demands that the pure moral law places on us. The goal of Chapter 2 is to develop a more precise understanding of these demands.

Kant defines the demands of the moral law as "categorical imperatives." Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances if our behavior is to conform to the moral law. Again, Kant points out that we cannot base our understanding of these imperatives on observations of specific decisions and actions. Categorical imperatives must be grasped a priori.

Kant's formula for the categorical imperative is essentially the same as the moral law formulated in Chapter 1. Again, Kant faces the problem of coming up with a law or imperative that relies exclusively on a priori concepts. The validity of an a priori imperative must be independent of all circumstantial considerations. Thus the categorical imperative cannot stipulate that you must do or not do this or that in such and such circumstances. It can only stipulate that your actions should be undertaken according to universally valid, self-consistent principles. If your motivation is valid only in particular circumstances, then your motivation is circumstantial. You are acting in accordance with a principle that you would not want others to adopt in different circumstances. Your action is therefore not universalizable; it is selfish and hypocritical.

Kant's examples provide useful illustrations of how Kant expects us to apply the categorical imperative in everyday practice. In each case, individuals have a duty to choose the course of action that appears most valid as a universal principle.

Yet Kant's examples are also useful in that they demonstrate the limits of his moral philosophy. Recall Hegel's criticism of Kant (summarized in the Commentary on Chapter 1). Hegel pointed out that Kant's formula of the moral law is useless unless we know something about social institutions and expectations. Kant's examples bear out this observation, for the examples of duty that Kant picks turn out to have a lot to do with the institutions and expectations of his society. Kant values integrity, hard work, and philanthropy. He argues that it is wrong to destroy your life, to embezzle money, to waste your life in idleness, or to neglect people that you could easily help. Most of us would probably agree with Kant's sentiments. But can we really say that these values are absolute imperatives of reason? Don't they have a lot to do with the values our families and communities have instilled in us?

Consider the second example. Kant says that it is wrong to borrow money without the expectation of paying it back. If everyone did this, Kant argues, then institutions of lending would collapse and it would become impossible to borrow money. This would cause great harm to others who wanted to borrow legitimately.

Surely Kant is correct that institutions of credit and lending work to the benefit of great numbers of people. But what about the desperate person he describes in his example? Is this person really supposed to subordinate his own survival needs to the abstract consideration that society would collapse if everyone followed his example? The fact is that most people won't follow this person's example, because most people won't find themselves in such desperate circumstances.

Furthermore, what if we imagine a situation where this desperate individual faced a choice between borrowing illegitimately and dying of starvation? Isn't this person's survival more important than the institution of borrowing and lending? What if this person found himself in such a desperate situation as a result of social circumstances beyond their control? In that case, couldn't we say that it is immoral for society to place a person in such circumstances? Wouldn't violating the laws of society by borrowing illegitimately then be a justifiable act of protest?

In sum, Kant's categorical imperative is a fascinating attempt to base moral thinking on the notion that self-contradiction is illogical, yet Kant's formula doesn't seem to do justice to the complexity of moral questions. Kant seems confident that everyone will come up with the same moral principles when they use the categorical imperative. But if people have different notions of duty or of what the universal "laws of nature" should be, then people may end up choosing different courses of action. On the other hand, if people constrain their moral thinking within a particular social context--as Hegel does, and as Kant appears to do in his examples--then they violate Kant's stipulation that moral thinking must set aside all considerations of time, place, and circumstances.

In the remaining portion of Chapter 2, Kant will reformulate his notion of the categorical imperative in terms of the intrinsic worth of all individual human beings. Some readers may find this version of Kant's theory more persuasive.

Before moving on, Kant's brief mention of God in this chapter merits a quick comment. Kant's comment that our idea of God comes from our notion of moral perfection is indicative of his views on religion. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that the principle subjects of traditional metaphysics-- free will, God, and immortality--involve insoluble questions. God, free will, and immortality are natural concepts of reason, but they are not possible objects of experience. Thus, Kant argues, we can have no knowledge of them (we cannot know whether or not God exists, for example); we can only know that we have a concept of moral perfection that produces an idea of the morally perfect being, God. (Kant's argument about God is discussed briefly in the Context section, and freedom of the will is a main topic in Chapter 3.)

These ideas were seen as a bit blasphemous in Kant's time. (He is suggesting, after all, that God may be nothing more than an idea.) When Kant presented his religious views in detail in 1793 in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, the Prussian government prohibited him from publishing further works on religious issues.

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Chapter 2 - Part 2

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Summary

So far, we have shown that duties must be based on a categorical rather than a hypothetical imperative, and we have established the content of the one and only categorical imperative. We have yet to establish conclusively that the categorical imperative is a binding law for any rational being possessing a free will.

If there is some necessary law that compels rational beings to follow the categorical imperative, that law must be based on the concept of the "will" of a rational being. The "will" is the faculty that enables rational beings to choose what course of action to follow. Rational beings may pursue certain "ends" using appropriate "means." Ends that are based on physical needs or wants will always provide merely hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative, however, may be based only on something that is an "end in itself"-- that is, an end that is a means only to itself and not to some other need, desire, or purpose.

Rational beings are ends in themselves. In pursuing their objectives, rational beings must always view themselves not only as means to some purpose, but also as ends in themselves. They must also recognize that other rational beings are ends in themselves as well. Thus if we formulate the categorical imperative in terms of the will of a rational being, it would run as follows: act in such a way that you always treat other people not merely as means to some end, but also as ends in themselves.

The four examples of duty that were discussed earlier are consistent with this formulation of the law. When people commit suicide, they treat their own life as a mere means for escaping an upsetting situation. When people make false promises to repay debts, they treat the people they have borrowed from as mere means to their own financial gain. A view of humanity as an end in itself requires us to pursue the maximum fulfillment of humanity's potential, which means that we must cultivate our talents. Similarly, a view of humanity as an end in itself requires us to work towards maximum happiness for humanity, which means that we must take care for the welfare of others.

The principle that every rational being is an end in itself is universal and applies to all rational beings. It comes from reason, not from experience. Now, if rational beings are ends in themselves, and not means to some other end, then the will of a rational being must be thought of as the maker of universal law. Otherwise their actions would be governed by some interest and they would function as mere means to some purpose. When rational beings will something for the sake of duty alone, they must renounce all interests and motivations other than duty. Thus their obedience to the law cannot be based on any specific interest. Rather, they must understand themselves to be subjects as well as authors of the law, and they must recognize that the law requires unconditional obedience.

This notion of rational beings as simultaneous authors and subjects of universal law leads us to the idea of a perfect community in which all people follow the objective laws of reason and treat their fellows not merely as means to ends but also always as ends in themselves. This perfect community may be called the "kingdom of ends," meaning a legal community (kingdom) composed of ends in themselves which respects all its members as ends in themselves. Morality consists in adopting only those maxims and motives that are consistent with the establishment of a kingdom of ends.

The "dignity" of rational beings requires that they accept no law that they would not themselves have enacted. Commodities and products that serve physical needs and desires have "prices" in the market. By contrast, qualities that constitute people as ends in themselves have an intrinsic, absolute value--they have "dignity." The dignity of morality is the criterion for people to serve as lawmakers in the kingdom of ends.

Thus the principle of morality may be formulated in three distinct but interrelated ways: (1) in terms of the form of universality (act such that your maxim could become universal law); (2) in terms of their purpose or "end" (act such that all rational beings are respected as ends in themselves); and (3) in terms of a complete social system (act such that your maxim could be law in the kingdom of ends). An absolutely good will must never be in conflict with itself; its actions must have the intrinsic value of universal laws of reason. The purposes of an absolutely good will must never be relative only to certain ends, but must rather have the intrinsic value of ends that could be recognized by all rational beings. Consequently, the absolutely good will must choose its maxims as though it were a law-giver in the kingdom of ends--even though there is no guarantee that the contingencies of nature and the actions of other people will not prevent the establishment of such a kingdom.

When rational beings pursue morality and the kingdom of ends, they elevate themselves above the demands of nature and of their material circumstances. They thus establish the independence, or "autonomy," of their will. By contrast, when a person's goals are determined by something other than universal law, their will is "heteronomous"--it depends on external factors in determining its goals.

Other philosophical systems have made the mistake of advancing bases for morality that would in fact render the will heteronomous. "Empirical" principles--principles oriented toward some outcome in the physical world-- cannot be the basis of morality, because they are always heteronomous; even when the goal is personal happiness, concerns about particular outcomes or courses of events can never have the status of universal laws of nature. "Rational" principles like the will of God are likewise heteronomous because they do not come from pure concepts of reason; we have no notion of divine perfection other than that which we derive from our own moral concepts. Anytime someone does something in order to attain something else--whether that something else is happiness or perfection or the satisfaction of some physical need or desire--the person's will is determined by that something else; the will is heteronomous, and the maxim of the action makes sense only in particular circumstances, not as a universal law of nature.

We still have not shown that there is a law that compels us in practice to abide by the categorical imperative. We have shown, however, that our general presuppositions about morality (the idea that moral actions are undertaken for the sake of duty alone) are based on a notion of the autonomy of the will.

Commentary

It may seem confusing that Kant precedes and follows his discussion of morality and the "will" with a disclaimer that he has not established that the categorical imperative has binding force for rational beings. Recall the provisional nature of Kant's argument in this book: it is only a "grounding" for the metaphysics of morals, not a full metaphysics of morals, let alone a complete analysis of "practical" (moral) reason and its role in our lives. Kant started off in Chapter 1 with the presupposition that people generally think of moral actions as actions performed for the sake of duty alone. He then developed an account of the "moral law" that may be based on this notion of duty and morality. In the first half of Chapter 2 he reformulated this moral law in terms of the categorical imperative. In the remainder of Chapter 2 he develops an account of the implications the moral law must have for the will of rational beings. Only in Chapter 3 will Kant explain that morality may be based on the concept of free will. As we will see, Kant qualifies even this statement by noting that the concept of free will cannot fully explain why we feel compelled to behave morally.

The fundamental idea that Kant introduces in the second half of Chapter 2 is that rational beings are "ends in themselves." When you settle on a course of action, Kant notes, you do not think of yourself as a means to some other purpose; you think of yourself as the purpose or "end" to which all your actions are directed. If you expect other people to accept your motives, you must respect the fact that other people also think of themselves as more than mere means to other goals. Thus your motives will lack universal validity unless you respect the fact that all rational beings have intrinsic worth, just as you do. The categorical imperative requires you to treat all your fellows as "ends in themselves"--that is, as objects of intrinsic value--and not as mere instruments for the attainment of your personal goals.

Kant's four examples of duty are no more successful in substantiating this idea than they were with the categorical imperative in the first half of the chapter. (Does failing to cultivate our talents really violate our notion that all people have intrinsic worth?) Nonetheless, his core insight fits fairly well with most people's basic sense of morality. In practice, Kant's notion of the "moral law" and the categorical imperative sounds a lot like the Biblical doctrine that we should treat other people as we would like them to treat us. Similarly, his notion of people as "ends in themselves" fits with the modern idea that all people possess a fundamental dignity. It is wrong to abuse people, or enslave them, or use them for selfish purposes, because doing so violates our sense that people are not physical objects that we may use as we see fit.

Kant's notion of a "kingdom of ends" also fits fairly well with modern ideas about politics. Though Kant is writing about morality, not politics, his description of the ideal community as one in which all people create their own laws is in essence a picture of democratic society. In practice, of course, societies must make laws by balancing different interests and viewpoints within a constitutional framework. In theory, however, democracies are based on Kant's notion that laws are valid if and only if they make sense to the people who must follow them.

Nevertheless, Kant's position is again vulnerable to the criticism that it is too abstract to be useful. Kant seems to think that reason is something static that people can use to develop universal laws and principles. In fact, different ideas make sense to people at different historical times and in different cultures. Kant seems to think that the notion that people are ends in themselves can provide clear moral guidance. In fact, this principle could be used in support of different viewpoints. (To pick just one controversial example, does abortion treat a potential baby as a mere means? Or would banning abortion treat women as mere means to the creation of babies?)

Kant's notion of "autonomy" is similarly suspect. Admittedly, Kant concedes that his notions of "autonomy" and of a "kingdom of ends" are ideal concepts that we cannot expect to encounter in real life. Still, we may want to ask whether it makes sense even to try to imagine a person making decisions without reference to any personal experience, cultural assumption, or material interest.

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Chapter 3

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Summary

Rational beings have the unique capacity to cause events through free will. Since a will that is free must be a will that gives itself its own law, autonomy of the will and free will are one and the same. Thus a will is free when and only when it follows moral laws. Morality therefore follows from the concept of free will.

Since morality is a matter for all rational beings, not just human beings, we cannot base our notion of morality on the concept of free will unless we establish that all rational beings have free will. "Proving" this issue from experience would be difficult if not impossible, yet we may assume that a being really is free if it thinks of itself as free when it acts, for such a being must be aware of morality's demands whether or not it really is free to execute them. Moreover, any being endowed with reason and with a will must think of itself as free, for reason would not be reason if it were subject to control by irrational forces from outside itself.

Thus we may presuppose that rational beings think of themselves as free, and we have established that the moral law and the categorical imperative follow from this concept of freedom. Yet why we would want to abide by this law is a different question. We may want to be moral because we feel it makes us more deserving of future happiness, yet this is merely an expression for the value that we attribute to morality; it does not answer the question of why we value morality.

Our logic so far seems circular: we explained that we may think of ourselves as free because we are aware of moral demands, yet on the other hand we based our notion of morality on our concept of freedom. This problem may be resolved by drawing a distinction between "appearances" and "things in themselves." In our everyday experience, we encounter a "sensible world" of appearances. We may presume that these appearances come from real objects ("things in themselves"), but we can have knowledge of these objects only insofar as they affect us. Human beings make use of the faculty of "understanding" to make sense of the world of appearances. The faculty of reason distinguishes between the "sensible" world of appearances and experiences, which will be different for all individuals, and the "intelligible" world of concepts that make sense to all people. Reason may also recognize the limits of understanding.

Human beings may understand themselves from the perspective of either the sensible or the intelligible world: they may think of themselves in terms of either the laws of nature, or the laws of reason. Insofar as rational beings think of themselves in terms of the laws of reason, they understand themselves to possess a free will that is independent of the forces of nature that govern the sensible world. This idea of freedom is the basis for the concept of autonomy and the moral law. Thus our inferences are not circular: our concept of freedom does not depend on our notion of morality; rather, it may be derived from our participation in the intelligible world.

If people lived exclusively in the intelligible world, they would possess a perfectly free and autonomous will. On the other hand, if people lived exclusively in the sensible world, all their actions would be governed by the law of nature and the rules of cause and effect. When actions of the will enter the sensible world, they have to be understood in terms of the rules of cause and effect that govern that world; thus actions will appear to have been caused by material needs and inclinations. Nevertheless, as rational beings we know that the intelligible world is the primary world for us; it is the "ground" for the sensible world, for we know of our sensible self only through appearances, whereas we have immediate knowledge of our intelligible self. We therefore know that we are subject to the categorical imperative and the ideas of freedom and morality that are entailed by the intelligible world.

If we lived exclusively in the intelligible world, the categorical imperative would command our will automatically. As it is, the categorical imperative takes the form of an "ought": all of us--even the most rotten scoundrels--know that we ought to have a pure will, even though in practice we cannot avoid impure influences.

Our idea of freedom is an a priori concept: it cannot be given to us by experience, for all our experiences are governed by the causal rules of the law of nature. On the other hand, our idea of natural necessity is also an a priori concept: the notion that all events are caused by prior events is a concept that we use to make sense of the world of appearances. These two concepts form an "antinomy"; neither concept can be explained away, and the contradiction between them cannot be resolved. We may recognize that each is appropriate for different purposes: we use the concept of necessity when we seek understanding, and the concept of freedom when we are pursuing a course of action. It is not necessary to decide which concept is correct. Things as appearances are governed by necessity; as a thing in itself, we are free. This duality is an inevitable consequence of the fact that we are divided between sensible and intelligible worlds.

All that individuals may know of the intelligible world is that reason demands that they act according to its law. The intelligible world cannot provide concrete objectives for action. Rather, it provides only the requirement that actions must follow a maxim that could be a universal law, and which is therefore consistent with freedom and autonomy.

Reason cannot demonstrate that we are free or prove that morality is possible, for whenever we use our intelligence to understand the world we cannot help but think in terms of the cause-and-effect relationships that govern the sensible world. The most reason can show is that the fact that causality governs the world of appearances does not mean that we cannot be free as things in ourselves. Reason also cannot explain why behaving morally makes us feel good. All that we can know is that morality is not based on this feeling, for this feeling is an experience; basing our moral sense on an experience would be heteronomy, whereas morality requires autonomy. Thus the idea of freedom is the only support that reason can provide for morality and the categorical imperative.

When reason seeks knowledge, it can do so only by determining the necessary conditions under which something is possible. This process produces an infinite regress: one thing is possible because of certain conditions, which are possible because of certain conditions and so forth. Reason escapes from this infinity by seeking unconditional imperatives. Consequently, it is not bothered that it cannot provide an explanation for the unconditional imperatives that it receives from morality and the idea of freedom. Indeed, if reason could provide a conditional explanation for our freedom, it would not be freedom, for freedom must be unconditional. It is enough for us to recognize the limits of our understanding and acknowledge the implications of the idea of freedom that we inexplicably possess.

Commentary

At first glance, Kant's analysis of freedom may seem strange. It certainly seems paradoxical to suggest that we are truly free only when we submit obediently to the moral law. Most of us probably think of ourselves as most free when we are at our most spontaneous--we feel most free when we do what we want to do. Kant's notion of freedom, however, is rigidly disciplinarian: you are most free when you follow the moral law and abide by reason's universal demands. The freedom of "doing what you want to do" is an illusion because when you do what you want to do you are a slave to physical needs and desires that come from your nature or the world around you, not from your capacity to give yourself your own law.

Historically speaking, this notion of freedom has more than a little to do with Kant's Protestant Christian heritage. In Kant's philosophy, a secular notion of reason has replaced God, but the hierarchy is fundamentally the same: spirit is good, body is bad; people are free when they follow spiritual strictures and suppress bodily desires.

Yet the fact that Kant's ideas have an identifiable pedigree does not mean that they are wrong, so it is important to evaluate Kant's argument carefully. Kant himself admits that, at first glance, there appears to be no good reason why we should follow the demands of reason and morality rather than the other demands of our nature. He thinks, however, that the distinction between appearances and "things in themselves" can provide some insight into why we attribute a higher value to morality and free will than to bodily needs and desires.

This distinction should be familiar from the Context section. According to Kant, we can have knowledge about the world only insofar as the world interacts with us. Thus we have knowledge only of "appearances," not of the "things in themselves" that actually make up the world. This division applies to ourselves as much as it does to other objects of our experience. On the one hand, we have a sensuous experience of ourselves as physical beings influenced by material interests and desires. On the other hand, we are aware that this physical self and the world of appearances in which it participates is not the whole story: we are also aware of an "intelligible" world including a concept of freedom.

Kant shows that this concept of freedom provides a basis for the notion of morality that he has developed in the Grounding. Being free, he argues, must mean being able to give ourselves our own law. Our law would not be our own if it came from conditions that we cannot control. Thus, Kant concludes, being free must mean pursuing a course of action that has unconditional validity--that is, validity independent of our life's material conditions. Recall that this requirement of unconditional validity was Kant's starting point in his analysis of morality: Kant began from the assumption that moral actions are actions which are undertaken for the sake of duty alone, rather than for the sake of some concrete objective. Since the requirement of unconditional validity led to the moral law and the categorical imperative, the idea of freedom must lead there also. Our idea of freedom provides a basis--a "ground"- -for morality.

Kant stresses, however, that a logical basis is different from an explanation. Knowing that freedom provides a basis for morality is not the same as knowing why we want to be moral. Likewise, knowing that we have a concept of freedom is not the same as knowing that we are free. Indeed, according to Kant, rational analysis can never prove that we are free, for any time we analyze our decisions we will see that certain circumstances or influences may have caused us to act as we did.

Yet if reason cannot prove that we are free, it can at least show that our idea of freedom cannot be disproven. This move in Kant's argument is the essential twist of Kant's "Copernican Revolution": when reason is caught in a bind, when analysis cannot resolve an issue (in this case, the issue of whether we are free), Kant turns reason back against itself, performing a "critique" of reason that demonstrates the limits of our understanding. We cannot know that we are free, yet we equally cannot know that we are not free. The fact that every event may be explained by a prior event is a quality of the world of appearances; it is a feature of the picture of the world that we develop as we go about trying to make sense of our experiences. It is not necessarily a quality of things in themselves. Since we are things in ourselves, causal determinacy is not the final word for us. Our notion that we are free may be correct, appearances notwithstanding.

This argument still does not explain why we would want to go about maximizing our freedom by following the categorical imperative and seeking autonomy. Kant presents three suggestions as to why we might value our freedom so highly. First, he points out that moral behavior makes us feel good--that we feel good about ourselves when we "do the right thing." He notes, however, that this feeling cannot be the reason why we are moral, for if our decisions were based exclusively on this feeling, our decisions would lack the pure, unconditional validity that is required by morality.

Second, Kant points out that the intelligible world has a certain primacy over the world of appearances. After all, our apparent, physical self is only an appearance; our "thing in itself" might be free. Lastly, Kant suggests in his "Concluding Note" that reason has a certain interest in thinking that we are free. When we analyze events in terms of causality, we end up with an infinite regress (a was caused by b, which was caused by c, and so forth). The notion of free will and the unconditional moral requirements that it entails provide a resting place for reason, a "first cause" that explains other events without requiring explanation. These two facts--the primacy of the intelligible world and reason's interest in free will--offer support for our tendency to think of ourselves as free and morally accountable, but they do not settle the question.

Thus Kant leaves us with a notion of freedom that can be neither proved nor disproved, and a notion of morality that is based on that notion of freedom. He cannot explain why or even how we can be moral, yet his account of morality and freedom amounts to a requirement that we suppress our personal needs and desires in the name of "universal law."

If you find these conclusions unsatisfying, you are not alone. Some philosophers have found Kant's notion of freedom unconvincing, and have opted to stick with our intuitive sense (described at the beginning of this Commentary section) that we are most free when we follow our own most urgent needs and desires. ##Nietzsche##, for instance, is famous for arguing that it is unhealthy to reason too much. He suggests that when we base our decisions on an elaborate rational test like the categorical imperative, we only end up with more inhibited choices--we fail to do what we would have freely done had we maintained a more spontaneous decision-making process. Depending on how you define the "self," reason could be just as much of an external force as any physical desire. If "universal law" doesn't fit with what we most want to do, is it really correct to say that we are most "free" when we suppress our desires and follow the law? Why couldn't we "freely" chose to follow our drives and desires instead of reason?

In defense of Kant, his account of morality does fit fairly well with common moral intuitions. By definition, morality involves constraining our selfish inclinations in ways that serve the greater good of humanity. Kant's rationalist morality is no more constraining than any other moral system. Moreover, as Kant points out, the categorical imperative can only be used to test the moral quality of our motives; it cannot prescribe the specific motives we should adopt. Kant seems to have confidence that reason will impose the same demands on all people. Nevertheless, he leaves it up to us to make use of reason to determine what moral maxims could serve as universal laws.

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Terms

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Empirical - Based on or relating to observational evidence. Thus an empirical fact would be a fact substantiated by evidence.

Enlightenment - A period in European intellectual history from the later seventeenth century to the early nineteenth characterized by confidence in reason and a willingness to challenge traditional assumptions.

Reason - The capacity for logical analysis and argument. "Reason" in this sense is related to the term "reasoning," which refers to logical deliberation or argument, and to the notion of giving "reasons" for one's beliefs. Enlightenment thinkers like Kant believed that reason could provide clear answers to basic philosophical, scientific, and political questions.

Will - The faculty that enables us to pursue a course of action and influence events in the world, as in "freewill," "an act of will," "impose your will on someone."

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The Good Will

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A "Good Will" is the only thing that is "good without qualification." Other "goods," such as intelligence and health, can be qualified. The Good Will is good by virtue of the fact that it is "the will to follow the Moral Law."

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The Notion of Duty

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There is a DISTINCTION between the "I want" (self-interest) and the "I ought" (ethics). Moral actions are not 'spontaneous' actions. That is, if I see someone in need of help, I may be inclined to 'look the other way' and attend to my own busy day, but I would recognize that I should assist in some way. For example, an elderly woman falls and is bleeding badly ... I may be on my way to work, but I recognize that I should at least seek assistance and call 911.

Considering only those actions that are seemingly good (as opposed to actions that we ordinarily recognize as wrong), there is a DISTINCTION that can still be made within Duty itself: Actions IN mere ACCORDANCE (conformity) WITH duty and actions done FROM A SENSE OF duty.

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The Nature of Imperatives

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Imperatives are commands. Of commands, there are those that command hypothetically and those that command categorically.

Hypothetical Imperatives have the general form: IF YOU WANT 'A,' THEN YOU OUGHT TO DO 'B.' For example, If you want to be an Olympic swimmer, you ought to go swimming every day. The 'ought' in these hypothetical imperatives is CONDITIONED by our desires & wants -- our 'goals.' Thus, if you don't want to be an Olympic swimmer, then you don't have to go swimming every day. Ultimately, our goals are grounded in SELF-INTEREST.

A Categorical Imperative has the general form: DO 'A' (i.e., it is UNCONDITIONED). For Kant, there is only one imperative that commands us unconditionally and that is the Moral Law: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

This single categorical imperative, however, has three formulations (the first two of which are): First Formulation: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to secure through your will a universal law of nature" Second Formulation: "Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, always as an end and never as a means only"

The examples that Kant offers as a way to demonstrate the use of these formulations in actual situations follows the categories of duties that were used at his time. These breakdown into four Kinds of Duties: Duties Toward Oneself (Perfect: Self-Preservation, Imperfect: Self-Cultivation) and Duties Toward Others (Perfect: Strict Obligation, Imperfect: Beneficence).

Following these kinds of duties, Kant's examples are (1) Suicide, (2) Promise-breaking, (3) Squandering Talents, (4)

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Critique of Kant's Theory

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Some feel that Kant's categorical imperative transgresses the distinction between Universal Principles (e.g., "Don't Lie") and Absolute Principles (e.g., "Never Lie"). And, indeed, Kant seemed to follow the latter in his comment on a famous case analysis: The Murderer at the Inn.

What is needed is a way to resolve conflicts of duties (see Ross's analysis of prima facie duties).

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c. The Good Will

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The will, Kant says, is the faculty of acting according to a conception of law. When we act, whether or not we achieve what we intend with our actions is often beyond our control, so the morality of our actions does not depend upon their outcome. What we can control, however, is the will behind the action. That is, we can will to act according to one law rather than another. The morality of an action, therefore, must be assessed in terms of the motivation behind it. If two people, Smith and Jones, perform the same act, from the same conception of the law, but events beyond Smith's control prevent her from achieving her goal, Smith is not less praiseworthy for not succeeding. We must consider them on equal moral ground in terms of the will behind their actions.

The only thing that is good without qualification is the good will, Kant says. All other candidates for an intrinsic good have problems, Kant argues. Courage, health, and wealth can all be used for ill purposes, Kant argues, and therefore cannot be intrinsically good. Happiness is not intrinsically good because even being worthy of happiness, Kant says, requires that one possess a good will. The good will is the only unconditional good despite all encroachments. Misfortune may render someone incapable of achieving her goals, for instance, but the goodness of her will remains.

Goodness cannot arise from acting on impulse or natural inclination, even if impulse coincides with duty. It can only arise from conceiving of one's actions in a certain way. A shopkeeper, Kant says, might do what is in accord with duty and not overcharge a child. Kant argues, "it is not sufficient to do that which should be morally good that it conform to the law; it must be done for the sake of the law." (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Akademie pagination 390) There is a clear moral difference between the shopkeeper that does it for his own advantage to keep from offending other customers and the shopkeeper who does it from duty and the principle of honesty.(Ibid., 398) Likewise, in another of Kant's carefully studied examples, the kind act of the person who overcomes a natural lack of sympathy for other people out of respect for duty has moral worth, whereas the same kind act of the person who naturally takes pleasure in spreading joy does not. A person's moral worth cannot be dependent upon what nature endowed them with accidentally. The selfishly motivated shopkeeper and the naturally kind person both act on equally subjective and accidental grounds. What matters to morality is that the actor think about their actions in the right manner.

We might be tempted to think that the motivation that makes an action good is having a positive goal--to make people happy, or to provide some benefit. But that is not the right sort of motive, Kant says. No outcome, should we achieve it, can be unconditionally good. Fortune can be misused, what we thought would induce benefit might actually bring harm, and happiness might be undeserved. Hoping to achieve some particular end, no matter how beneficial it may seem, is not purely and unconditionally good. It is not the effect or even the intended effect that bestows moral character on an action. All intended effects "could be brought about through other causes and would not require the will of a rational being, while the highest and unconditional good can be found only in such a will." (Ibid., 401) It is the possession of a rationally guided will that adds a moral dimension to one's acts. So it is the recognition and appreciation of duty itself that must drive our actions.

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d. Duty

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What is the duty that is to motivate our actions and to give them moral value? Kant distinguishes two kinds of law produced by reason. Given some end we wish to achieve, reason can provide a hypothetical imperative, or rule of action for achieving that end. A hypothetical imperative says that if you wish to buy a new car, then you must determine what sort of cars are available for purchase. Conceiving of a means to achieve some desired end is by far the most common employment of reason. But Kant has shown that the acceptable conception of the moral law cannot be merely hypothetical. Our actions cannot be moral on the ground of some conditional purpose or goal. Morality requires an unconditional statement of one's duty.

And in fact, reason produces an absolute statement of moral action. The moral imperative is unconditional; that is, its imperative force is not tempered by the conditional "if I want to achieve some end, then do X." It simply states, do X. Kant believes that reason dictates a categorical imperative for moral action. He gives at least three formulations of the Categorical Imperative.

1. "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." (Ibid., 422)
2. "Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature." (Ibid)
3. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only." (Ibid., 429)

What are Kant's arguments for the Categorical Imperative? First, consider an example. Consider the person who needs to borrow money and is considering making a false promise to pay it back. The maxim that could be invoked is, "when I need of money, borrow it, promising to repay it, even though I do not intend to." But when we apply the universality test to this maxim it becomes clear that if everyone were to act in this fashion, the institution of promising itself would be undermined. The borrower makes a promise, willing that there be no such thing as promises. Thus such an action fails the universality test.

The argument for the first formulation of the categorical imperative can be thought of this way. We have seen that in order to be good, we must remove inclination and the consideration of any particular goal from our motivation to act. The act cannot be good if it arises from subjective impulse. Nor can it be good because it seeks after some particular goal which might not attain the good we seek or could come about through happenstance. We must abstract away from all hoped for effects. If we remove all subjectivity and particularity from motivation we are only left with will to universality. The question "what rule determines what I ought to do in this situation?" becomes "what rule ought to universally guide action?" What we must do in any situation of moral choice is act according to a maxim that we would will everyone to act according to.

The second version of the Categorical Imperative invokes Kant's conception of nature and draws on the first Critique. In the earlier discussion of nature, we saw that the mind necessarily structures nature. And reason, in its seeking of ever higher grounds of explanation, strives to achieve unified knowledge of nature. A guide for us in moral matters is to think of what would not be possible to will universally. Maxims that fail the test of the categorical imperative generate a contradiction. Laws of nature cannot be contradictory. So if a maxim cannot be willed to be a law of nature, it is not moral.

The third version of the categorical imperative ties Kant's whole moral theory together. Insofar as they possess a rational will, people are set off in the natural order of things. They are not merely subject to the forces that act upon them; they are not merely means to ends. They are ends in themselves. All means to an end have a merely conditional worth because they are valuable only for achieving something else. The possessor of a rational will, however, is the only thing with unconditional worth. The possession of rationality puts all beings on the same footing, "every other rational being thinks of his existence by means of the same rational ground which holds also for myself; thus it is at the same time an objective principle from which, as a supreme practical ground, it must be possible to derive all laws of the will." (Ibid., 429)

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9. Kant's Criticisms of Utilitarianism

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Kant's criticisms of utilitarianism have become famous enough to warrant some separate discussion. Utilitarian moral theories evaluate the moral worth of action on the basis of happiness that is produced by an action. Whatever produces the most happiness in the most people is the moral course of action. Kant has an insightful objection to moral evaluations of this sort. The essence of the objection is that utilitarian theories actually devalue the individuals it is supposed to benefit. If we allow utilitarian calculations to motivate our actions, we are allowing the valuation of one person's welfare and interests in terms of what good they can be used for. It would be possible, for instance, to justify sacrificing one individual for the benefits of others if the utilitarian calculations promise more benefit. Doing so would be the worst example of treating someone utterly as a means and not as an end in themselves.

Another way to consider his objection is to note that utilitarian theories are driven by the merely contingent inclination in humans for pleasure and happiness, not by the universal moral law dictated by reason. To act in pursuit of happiness is arbitrary and subjective, and is no more moral than acting on the basis of greed, or selfishness. All three emanate from subjective, non-rational grounds. The danger of utilitarianism lies in its embracing of baser instincts, while rejecting the indispensable role of reason and freedom in our actions.

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From Good Will to Universal Law

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We begin with the concept of that which can be conceived to be good without qualification, a good will. Other good features of human nature and the benefits of a good life, Kant pointed out, have value only under appropriate conditions, since they may be used either for good or for evil. But a good will is intrinsically good; its value is wholly self-contained and utterly independent of its external relations. Since our practical reason is better suited to the development and guidance of a good will than to the achievement of happiness, it follows that the value of a good will does not depend even on the results it manages to produce as the consequences of human action.

Kant's moral theory is, therefore, deontological: actions are morally right in virtue of their motives, which must derive more from duty than from inclination. The clearest examples of morally right action are precisely those in which an individual agent's determination to act in accordance with duty overcomes her evident self-interest and obvious desire to do otherwise. But in such a case, Kant argues, the moral value of the action can only reside in a formal principle or "maxim," the general commitment to act in this way because it is one's duty. So he concludes that "Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law."

According to Kant, then, the ultimate principle of morality must be a moral law conceived so abstractly that it is capable of guiding us to the right action in application to every possible set of circumstances. So the only relevant feature of the moral law is its generality, the fact that it has the formal property of universalizability, by virtue of which it can be applied at all times to every moral agent. From this chain of reasoning about our ordinary moral concepts, Kant derived as a preliminary statement of moral obligation the notion that right actions are those that practical reason would will as universal law.

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Imperatives for Action

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More accurate comprehension of morality, of course, requires the introduction of a more precise philosophical vocabulary. Although everything naturally acts in accordance with law, Kant supposed, only rational beings do so consciously, in obedience to the objective principles determined by practical reason. Of course, human agents also have subjective impulses—desires and inclinations that may contradict the dictates of reason. So we experience the claim of reason as an obligation, a command that we act in a particular way, or an imperative. Such imperatives may occur in either of two distinct forms, hypothetical or categorical.

A hypothetical imperative conditionally demands performance of an action for the sake of some other end or purpose; it has the form "Do A in order to achieve X." The application of hypothetical imperatives to ethical decisions is mildly troublesome: in such cases it is clear that we are morally obliged to perform the action A only if we are sure both that X is a legitimate goal and that doing A will in fact produce this desirable result. For a perfectly rational being, all of this would be analytic, but given the general limitations of human knowledge, the joint conditions may rarely be satisfied.

A categorical imperative, on the other hand, unconditionally demands performance of an action for its own sake; it has the form "Do A." An absolute moral demand of this sort gives rise to familiar difficulties: since it expresses moral obligation with the perfect necessity that would directly bind any will uncluttered by subjective inclinations, the categorical imperative must be known a priori; yet it cannot be an analytic judgment, since its content is not contained in the concept of a rational agent as such. The supreme principle of morality must be a synthetic a priori proposition. Leaving its justification for the third section of the Grounding (and the Second Critique), Kant proceeded to a discussion of the content and application of the categorical impetative.

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The Categorical Imperative

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Constrained only by the principle of universalizability, the practical reason of any rational being understands the categorical imperative to be: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." That is, each individual agent regards itself as determining, by its decision to act in a certain way, that everyone (including itself) will always act according to the same general rule in the future. This expression of the moral law, Kant maintained, provides a concrete, practical method for evaluating particular human actions of several distinct varieties.

Consider, for example, the case (#2 in the text) of someone who contemplates relieving a financial crisis by borrowing money from someone else, promising to repay it in the future while in fact having no intention of doing so. (Notice that this is not the case of finding yourself incapable of keeping a promise originally made in good faith, which would require a different analysis.) The maxim of this action would be that it is permissible to borrow money under false pretenses if you really need it. But as Kant pointed out, making this maxim into a universal law would be clearly self-defeating. The entire practice of lending money on promise presupposes at least the honest intention to repay; if this condition were universally ignored, the (universally) false promises would never be effective as methods of borrowing. Since the universalized maxim is contradictory in and of itself, no one could will it to be law, and Kant concluded that we have a perfect duty (to which there can never be any exceptions whatsoever) not to act in this manner.

On the other hand, consider the less obvious case (#4 in the text) of someone who lives comfortably but contemplates refusing any assistance to people who are struggling under great hardships. The maxim here would be that it is permissible never to help those who are less well-off than ourselves. Although Kant conceded that no direct contradiction would result from the universalization of such a rule of conduct, he argued that no one could consistently will that it become the universal law, since even the most fortunate among us rightly allow for the possibility that we may at some future time find ourselves in need of the benevolence of others. Here we have only an imperfect duty not act so selfishly, since particular instances may require exceptions to the rule when it conflicts either with another imperfect duty (e.g., when I don't have enough money to help everyone in need) or a perfect duty (e.g., if the only way to get more money would be under a false promise).

Kant also supposed that moral obligations arise even when other people are not involved. Since it would be contradictory to universalize the maxim of taking one's own life if it promises more misery than satisfaction (#1), he argued, we have a perfect duty to ourselves not to commit suicide. And since no one would will a universalized maxim of neglecting to develop the discipline required for fulfilling one's natural abilities (#3), we have an imperfect duty to ourselves not to waste our talents.

These are only examples of what a detailed application of the moral law would entail, but they illustrate the general drift of Kant's moral theory. In cases of each of the four sorts, he held that there is a contradiction—either in the maxim itself or in the will—involved in any attempt to make the rule under which we act into a universal law. The essence of immorality, then, is to make an exception of myself by acting on maxims that I cannot willfully universalize. It is always wrong to act in one way while wishing that everyone else would act otherwise. (The perfect world for a thief would be one in which everyone else always respected private property.) Thus, the purely formal expression of the categorical imperative is shown to yield significant practical application to moral decisions.

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Alternative Formulae for the Categorical Imperative

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Although he held that there is only one categorical imperative of morality, Kant found it helpful to express it in several ways. Some of the alternative statements can be regarded as minor variations on his major themes, but two differ from the "formula of universal law" sufficiently to warrant a brief independent discussion.

Kant offered the "formula of the end in itself" as: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means." This places more emphasis on the unique value of human life as deserving of our ultimate moral respect and thus proposes a more personal view of morality. In application to particular cases, of course, it yields the same results: violating a perfect duty by making a false promise (or killing myself) would be to treat another person (or myself) merely as a means for getting money (or avoiding pain), and violating an imperfect duty by refusing to offer benevolence (or neglecting my talents) would be a failure to treat another person (or myself) as an end in itself. Thus, the Kantian imperative agrees with the Christian expression of "The Golden Rule" by demanding that we derive from our own self-interest a generalized concern for all human beings.

Drawing everything together, Kant arrived at the "formula of autonomy," under which the decision to act according to a maxim is actually regarded as having made it a universal law. Here the concern with human dignity is combined with the principle of universalizability to produce a conception of the moral law as self-legislated by each for all. As Kant puts it,

A rational being belongs to the kingdom of ends as a member when he legislates in it universal laws while also being himself subject to these laws. He belongs to it as sovereign, when as legislator he is himslf subject to the will of no other.

A rational being must always regard himself as legislator in a kingdom of ends rendered possible by freedom of the will, whether as member or as sovereign.

In this final formulation, the similarity of Kant's moral theory with his epistemology should be clear. Just as the understanding in each of us determines the regulative principles of natural science that all must share, so the practical reason in each of us determines the universal maxims of morality that all must obey.

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Autonomy of the Will

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In fact, this final formula for the categorical imperative brings us back to the original concept of the will itself as that which is good without qualification. At this point in the argument, Kant can provide a more technical statement of its intrinsic moral value by distinguishing between autonomy and heteronomy of the will.

A heteronomous will is one in obedience to rules of action that have been legislated externally to it. Such a will is always submitting itself to some other end, and the principles of its action will invariably be hypothetical imperatives urging that it act in such a way as to receive pleasure, appease the moral sense, or seek personal perfection. In any case, the moral obligations it proposes cannot be regarded as completely binding upon any agent, since their maxim of action comes from outside it.

An autonomous will, on the other hand, is entirely self-legislating: The moral obligations by which it is perfectly bound are those which it has imposed upon itself while simultaneously regarding them as binding upon everyone else by virtue of their common possession of the same rational faculties. All genuinely moral action, Kant supposed, flows from the freely chosen dictates of an autonomous will. So even the possibility of morality presupposes that human agents have free will, and the final section of the Grounding is devoted to Kant's effort to prove that they do.

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1. What does Kant mean by "good without qualification"?

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Obviously people try to seek and avoid many different sorts of things; those things which they seek they call "good," while those they try to avoid, they call "bad". These "goods" which people seek may be divided into those which are sought as means to some further end and those which they seek as good as ends in themselves. Obviously some things may be "good" as means to one end and "bad" as means to some other end. Different persons, motivated by different ends, will thus find different things "good" and "bad" (relative to their different ends). More food is "good" to a starving man, but it is "bad" to one overweight.

In order for something to be good "without qualification" it must not be merely "good" as means to one end but "bad" as means to some other end. It must be sought as good totally independently of serving as a means to something else; it must be "good in-itself." Furthermore, while one thing may be good as means relative to a particular end, that "end" becomes a "means" relative to some other "end". So a college diploma may be sought as "good" as a means for the end of a higher-paying job. And a higher-paying job may be "good" as a means to increased financial security; and increased financial security may be "good" as a means to obtaining the necessities of life as well as a few of its luxuries. However, if we seek A only for the sake of B, and B only for the sake of C, etc., then there is never a justification for seeking A at the beginning of such a series unless there is something at the end of that series which we seek as a "good in-itself" not merely as means to some further end. Such an "ultimate" end would then be an "absolute" rather than a "relative" good. Kant means that a good will is "good without qualification" as such an absolute good in-itself, universally good in every instance and never merely as good to some yet further end.

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2. Why is a "good will" the only thing which is universally absolutely good?

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Kant's point is that to be universally and absolutely good, something must be good in every instance of its occurrence. He argues that all those things which people call "good" (including intelligence, wit, judgment, courage, resolution, perseverance, power, riches, honor, health, and even happiness itself) can become "extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them...is not good." In other words, if we imagine a bad person (i.e. one who willed or wanted to do evil), who had all of these so-called "goods" (intelligence, wit, etc.), these very traits would make only that much worse his will to do what is wrong. (We would get the "criminal master-mind" of the comic books.) Even "health" often also cited as a "good in- itself" may serve to make a person insensitive and indifferent to the lack of good health in others.

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3. Isn't "happiness" such a universal, absolute good in-itself?

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Kant answers clearly, "No." However, many philosophers (the ones we call "eudaemonists") have assumed the obvious answer to be "Yes." All ancient eudaemonistic ethical theories as well as modern utilitarian theories virtually define "happiness" as the absolute end of all ethical behavior. Such eudaemonistic ethical theories are attractive because of the fact that they make it easy to answer the question "Why should I do what is morally right?" For any eudaemonistic theory the answer will always be "Because the morally right action is always ultimately in the interest of your own happiness." Since these theories generally assume that people really are motivated by a desire for their own happiness, their only problem is to show that the morally right action really does serve as the best means to obtain the end of happiness. Once you are led to see this, so such theories assume, the question "Why should I do what is morally right?" is automatically answered.

Kant totally rejects this eudaemonistic way of ethical theorizing; he calls decisions made according to such a calculation of what produces your own happiness "prudential" decisions and he distinguishes them sharply from ethical decisions. This is not because Kant thinks we are not motivated by a desire for happiness, in fact like the ancient philosophers, he takes it for granted that we are; however, such motivation cannot be that which makes an action ethically right or wrong. The fact that an action might lead to happiness cannot be the grounds of moral obligation. Kant regards the notion of "happiness" as both too indefinite and too empirical to serve as the grounds for moral obligation - why we ought to do something. In the first place it is "too indefinite" because all people have very different sorts of talents, tastes and enjoyments which mean in effect that one person's happiness may be another person's misery. This is because the concept is "empirical" in the sense that the only way you can know whether what you seek will actually serve to bring you happiness is by experience. As Kant points out, "...it is impossible that the most clear-sighted [man] should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this...." Since we cannot know a priori before an action whether it really will be conducive to our happiness (because the notion is so indefinite that even the most clear-sighted amongst us cannot know everything that must form part of his own happiness) the desire for our own happiness cannot serve as a motive to determine our will to do this or that action. Moreover, Kant observes that even "...the general well-being and contentment with one's condition that is called happiness, can inspire pride, and often presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of these on the mind...." In other words happiness cannot be good without qualification for if we imagine it occurring in a person totally devoid of the desire to do what is right, it could very well lead to all sorts of immoral actions.

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4. What does Kant mean by a "good will"?

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To act out of a "good will" for Kant means to act out of a sense of moral obligation or "duty". In other words, the moral agent does a particular action not because of what it produces (its consequences) in terms of human experience, but because he or she recognizes by reasoning that it is morally the right thing to do and thus regards him or herself as having a moral duty or obligation to do that action. One may of course as an added fact get some pleasure or other gain from doing the right thing, but to act morally, one does not do it for the sake of its desirable consequences, but rather because one understands that it is morally the right thing to do. In this respect Kant's view towards morality parallels the Christian's view concerning obedience to God's commandments, according to which the Christian obeys God's commandments simply because God commands them, not for the sake of rewards in heaven after death or from fear of punishment in hell. In a similar way, for Kant the rational being does what is morally right because he recognizes himself as having a moral duty to do so rather than for anything he or she may get out of it.

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5. When does one act from a motive of doing one's duty?

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Kant answers that we do our moral duty when our motive is determined by a principle recognized by reason rather than the desire for any expected consequence or emotional feeling which may cause us to act the way we do. The "will" is defined as that which provides the motives for our actions. Obviously many times we are motivated by specific desires or emotions. I may act the way I do from a feeling of friendship for a particular individual, or from desire for a particular consequence. I may also be motivated by particular emotions of fear, or envy, or pity, etc. When I act in these ways, I am motivated by a desire for a particular end; in Kant's vocabulary I am said to act out of "inclination." Insofar as an action is motivated by inclination, the motive to do it is contingent upon the desire for the particular end which the action is imagined to produce. Thus as different rational agents might have different inclinations, there is no one motive from inclination common to all rational beings.

Kant distinguishes acts motivated by inclination from those done on principle. For example someone may ask why I did a certain thing, and point out that it brought me no gain, or perhaps even made life a bit less pleasant; to which I might reply, "I know I do not stand to gain by this action, but I do it because of the principle of the thing." For Kant, this sort of state of mind is the essence of the moral consciousness. When I act on principle the sole factor determining my motive is that this particular action exemplifies a particular case falling under a general law or "maxim." For Kant the mental process by which the actor understands that a particular case falls under a certain principle is an exercise in "reasoning," or to be more precise, what Kant called "practical reason," reason used as a guide to action. ("Pure Reason" is reason used to attain certainty, or what Kant called "scientific knowledge.") Since to have moral worth an action must be done on principle, and to see that a certain principle applies to a particular action requires the exercise of reason, only rational beings can be said to behave morally.

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6. Why does Kant believe that to have moral worth an action must be done on principle rather than inclination?

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Kant's argument here may seem strange to the contemporary outlook, for it assumes that everything in nature is designed to serve a purpose. Now it is an obvious fact that human beings do have a faculty of "practical reason," reason applied to the guidance of actions. (Kant is of course fully aware the people often fail to employ this faculty; i.e. they act non-rationally (without reason) or even irrationally (against what reason dictates); but he intends that his ethical theory is normative, prescribing how people ought to behave, rather than descriptive of how they actually do behave.) If everything in nature serves some purpose then the faculty of practical reason must have some purpose. Kant argues that this purpose cannot be merely the attainment of some specific desired end, or even the attainment of happiness in general, for if it were, it would have been far better for nature simply to have endowed persons with an instinct to achieve this end, as is the case with the non- rational animals. Therefore, the fact that human beings have a faculty of practical reason cannot be explained by claiming that it allows them to attain some particular end. So the fact that reason can guide our actions, but cannot do so for the sake of achieving some desired end, leads Kant to the conclusion that the function of practical reason must be to allow humans as rational beings to apply general principles to particular instances of action, or in other words to engage in moral reasoning as a way of determining one's moral obligation: what is the "right" action to do. Thus we act morally only when we act rationally to apply a moral principle to "determine" the motive of our action.

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7. Do all persons have the same moral duties?

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According to Kant only rational beings can be said to act morally. Reason for Kant (as for all the Enlightenment thinkers) is the same for all persons; in other words there isn't a poor man's reason versus a rich man's reason or a white man's reason versus a black man's reason. All persons are equal as potentially rational beings. Therefore, if reason dictates that one person, in a particular situation, has a moral duty to do a particular thing, then any person, in that same situation, would equally well have a duty to do that same thing. In this sense Kant's reasoning parallels the way in which stoicism led Roman lawyers to the conclusion that all citizens are equal before the law. Thus Kant is a moral "absolutist" in the sense that all persons have the same moral duties, for all persons are equal as rational beings. But this "absolutism" does not mean that Kant holds that our moral duties are not relative to the situation in which we find ourselves. Thus it is quite possible for Kant to conclude that in one particular situation I may have a duty to keep my promise, but in another situation (in which, for example, keeping a promise conflicts with a higher duty) I may equally well be morally obligated to break a promise.

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8. Why is it that actions done for the sake of some end cannot have moral worth?

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Since what one's moral duties are in a particular situation are the same for all persons, one's moral duties must be independent of the particular likes and dislikes of the moral agent. Now any action which is motivated by the desire for some particular end presupposes that the agent has the desire for that end. However, from the simple concept of a "rational being" it is not possible to deduce that any particular rational being would have any particular desired ends. Most people, of course, desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain, but there is no logical contradiction involved in the notion of a "rational being who does not desire pleasure" or perhaps who desires pain. Thus reason does not dictate that any particular rational being has any particular end. But if the desire for a particular end gave an action its moral worth, then only those rational beings who happened in fact to desire that end would regard such actions as "good," while those that desired to avoid such an end, would regard the action as "bad." (Thus for example eudaemonistic theories which assume the end of achieving happiness is what gives an action its moral value, would serve to induce only those beings who happened to have the desire for happiness to behave morally. For those rational beings who happened to desire to avoid happiness, there would be no incentive to behave morally and what appears "good" to the happiness-seeker will appear positively "bad" to one who seeks to avoid happiness.) But, as we have seen above, Kant's absolutism reaches the conclusion that moral obligation is the same for all persons. Thus the ground of moral obligation, what makes an action a moral duty, cannot lie in the end which that act produces.

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9. What does reason tell us about the principle that determines the morally dutiful motive?

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Since Kant has ruled out the ends (i.e. the "consequences") which an act produces as well as any motive but those determined by the application of principle as determining moral duty, he is faced now with the task of deriving the "fundamental principles" of his ethical theory solely from the concept of what it is to be a rational being. He now argues (in a very obscure manner) that from this notion of what is demanded by being rational, he can deduce that it would be irrational to act on any principle which would not apply equally to any other actor in the same situation. In other words, Kant claims that reason dictates that the act we are morally obligated to do is one which is motivated by adherence to a principle which could, without inconsistency, be held to apply to any (and all) rational agents. This fundamental ethical principle, which is commonly called "The Categorical Imperative," Kant summarizes with the statement that "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim become a universal law." Kant's claim that Reason demands the moral agent to act on a universal law thus in many ways parallels Jesus' dictum that God commands that those who love Him obey "The Golden Rule."

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10. What is a "categorical imperative"?

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Any statement of moral obligation which I make the principle of my action (my "maxim" in Kant's vocabulary), in the context of a specific situation, constitutes an "imperative." I might, in such a situation, choose to act on a statement of the form, "If I desire some specific end (e.g. happiness, maximum pleasure, power, etc.), then I ought to do such and such an action." In doing so I would be acting on what Kant calls "a hypothetical imperative." However, Kant has already ruled out ends as the grounds for moral obligation; thus hypothetical imperatives cannot serve as the basis for determining my moral duty. However, if I act on a principle which has the form, "In circumstances of such and such a character, I ought to do this particular act, (quite apart from consequences)," then I am acting on what Kant calls a "categorical imperative."

However when Kant talks about "The Categorical Imperative, he does not mean simplyhis claim that the principle of our action cannot be a hypothetical imperative. Instead, the phrase, "The Categorical Imperative" refers to the principle that all principles of our action (maxims) could consistently become universal laws. The Categorical Imperative is a principle about principles, or a "second order" principle. "First order" principles would be the specific moral principles which determine one's ethical obligation, such as, for example the Ten Commandments; what The Categorical Imperative determines is the form of these first order principles. They must have the "form" that can be consistently "universalized," i.e. held to apply as universal moral laws for all rational agents. Kant holds that this is all reason can deduce. Exactly which specific moral principles are those which can consistently be universalized cannot be determined by reasoning a priori, but only empirically, by experience. Kant's "metaphysics of morals" thus makes no claim to deduce what our specific moral duties are. All Kant claims to deduce is the form which any such principles must have. It is thus unfair to criticize Kant's ethics as "sterile" or "empty" because it does not tell us specifically what our duties are; he never intended to provide a system of morality, but instead the philosophical ground for why a moral principle has the form it does.

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11. What is required of a "universal law"?

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Any principle which can be "universalized" is one which can be held to apply to all persons without involving inconsistency. Presumably Kant reaches this conclusion because what it is to be a "rational being" is to act in a way so as to avoid "inconsistency." Thus a great deal of Kant's ethics depends on giving some meaning to what it is to act "inconsistently." The general intent of The Categorical Imperative is clear enough: it is to eliminate acting on any principles which would clearly involve outrageously immoral conduct. Thus for example to act on the principle that I can pursue my own pleasure even if it causes others pain or unhappiness would be considered "inconsistent" for if all persons acted on such a principle, then they would pursue their own pleasure even if it caused me pain, and that would be "inconsistent" with the principle that I act on in pursuing my own pleasure. Or another example: to act on the principle that I may break my promises whenever it is convenient to do so, would, if universalized, mean everyone could do so. The practice of promise making would then quickly loose its very purpose which is to secure a commitment on which one can depend. To act on such a principle, then, would be "inconsistent" with the very practice of making promises.

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12. Is there something wrong with this notion of "inconsistency"?

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We must recall that Kant's claim is to deduce The Categorical Imperative from the concept of the moral agent as a rational being. Thus the "inconsistency" which he intends should be a form of rational inconsistency. In other words there should be no appeal made to what the agent desires or doesn't desire, for to do so would be to appeal to "ends" and they might vary from one agent to another.

Now let us suppose that I consider acting on the principle, "Steal anything you like." I would have to universalize this principle, so I would have to accept the principle that everyone could steal anything they liked. Society would quickly get very much worse and turn into a war of all against all. Life might even become brief, and certainly my private property would be very insecure. These might be terrible consequences of my principle, but remember, they are not supposed to count in determining my moral duties. Have I acted inconsistently? Foolishly, perhaps, but why might I not say I prefer a world of constant battle with my fellow men. There seems nothing inconceivable about the concept of a rational being who might prefer the struggle and turmoil of a war of all against all to a world with secure property and no theft. In any event, all we could point to in order to justify the desirability of the one over the other is the consequences of living in such worlds. Thus it seems that when we actually try to apply The Categorical Imperative, consequences come in again "by the back door."

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13. What else does Kant claim we can deduce from the concept of a rational being as such?

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Kant claims that there is but one Categorical Imperative, what is normally called "The Categorical Imperative." But he also claims that he can deduce three different formulations of the one principle. We have already seen the first of these, and how Kant arrived at it. The route to the other two formulations is too obscure to be considered in these notes. But it is significant to an appreciation of Kant's whole ethical position to know what these are.

The second is as follows: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means merely." In other words you must always treat every rational being including yourself as an end and never as a means to some further end. This formulation of the categorical Imperative reflects the typical Enlightenment outlook (which may seem today commonplace, but was then a vigorous new idea) that each human person is of value in and for him/herself. To "use" aother person as a means for the furtherance of one's own ends is to reduce that person to a thing, to deny him/her status as a rational being. The Categorical Imperative, then, is also the absolute injunction never to act in such a way.

The third formulation of The Categorical Imperative states that you must act in accordance with the principle that "the laws to which you are subject are those of your own giving, although at the same time they are universal." The moral agent is one who recognizes the source for the moral obligation under which he/she lives to be him/herself. For the physical world "natural" law prevails; this world is determined by that natural law to behave in the way it does. In contrast, the human will as the will of a moral agent, a rational being, is a will which is also determined by law, but it is a law which that rational agent freely chooses to adopt and impose on him/herself. The stone does not choose to obey the law of gravity, but the moral agent freely chooses in full awareness to adopt that moral principle which governs his/her life. The value or "dignity" of a moral being lies in the fact that he/she lives by a law which he/she freely "legislates" on his/her own life. Each member of a community of such moral agents would "legislate" on him/herself the same law, for all would be universalizable. Thus we would have what Kant calls a "kingdom" of individual persons each obeying the same moral law which each had freely chosen to impose on him/herself, recognizing his/her own dignity as a free rational self-legislating being. Kant refers to this ideal moral community as "a kingdom of ends." It remains one of the most exalted conceptual ideals which we still today treasure from our Enlightenment heritage.