Comments?
I'd love to hear!Kant’s Ethics: A Sketch
Kant’s theory begins with the assumption, which he shares with common sense, that morality is real and objective. He notices something others have also noticed – that if morality is objective, it must be universalizable. Why? It’s actually a fairly simple point. If morality is not universalizable – that is, if it does not apply to all in the same way – then, that seems to lead to the possibility that there could be two situations that were exactly the same in all relevant respects, but the same action could be morally permitted in one case and not in the other. That makes morality sound like magic – somebody waves the morality wand over one of the situations and a given action is allowed, but the same action isn’t allowed in another situation that is just the same otherwise. But, that seems like just the kind of thing we mean by something not being objective. (How do you tell if the morality wand has been waved over the option you favor?)
That’s not what makes his theory original, though. As I said, others had noticed the same thing. What was original was the idea that this requirement was not only necessary for moral claims to be objective, but that it was sufficient, too. If we looked at it deeply enough, we would see that it was all we needed.
Here’s a sketch of what I think is going on: What he does is to ask how there can possibly be such a thing as what morality, according to common sense, is supposed to be.
He takes it for granted that morality is real or objective in some sense.
He also accepts Hume’s claim that ought-statements can’t be derived from is-statements. You can’t go from a set of premises about what is true to a conclusion about what ought to be done, unless you’ve included some assumption about what ought to be done already in your premises. So, he doesn’t have the option of saying that morality is real or objective “because it corresponds to the facts.�
So, he asks the question: How is morality possible? That is, how is it possible that morality can be real or objective – that is, can be what Kant, in agreement with common sense, takes it to be – even if you can’t derive it from any set of facts, however large?
He tries to move towards an answer by ruling certain things out. The first is that morality is based on satisfying some preference or desire. Kant says that’s not an option because it doesn’t capture the “bindingness� of morality. If it were right, then we could release ourselves from any moral obligation just by changing our goals or objectives. My obligation not to murder would flow from some goal I had, and, just by adopting different goals, I could bring it about that it was not wrong for me to murder. My victim might object, but so what? My reasons for caring about the victim also flow from my own goals and purposes – which can be changed.
So, he concludes that one thing that has to be true of morality (if it is to be objective and binding) is that it have “the form of law.� This shouldn’t be interpreted – though Kant did sometimes interpret it this way himself, perhaps on account of the Judeo-Christian sources of some of his thought – to mean that morality must have the form of short, easily statable, exceptionless rules. Instead, the form of law should be taken to imply that, whatever morality is, (a) it has to stand in potential contrast to present will, desire or inclination – else it wouldn’t be binding if we willed, desired or inclined otherwise, (b) we have to have good reason to obey it, and (c) in order for us to have good reason to obey it, it has to somehow be non-arbitrary – it can’t make a distinction without a difference. Something that fulfills these conditions, he calls the categorical imperative. It is an imperative because it directs us, tells us what to do. It is categorical, because it tells us what to do without regard to our particular current desires, inclinations and the like. It doesn’t say “If you want such and such, you must do so and so.� (That would be a hypothetical imperative.) It just says “You must do so and so.�
How could there be anything like that? How could I have a good reason to act according to some requirement if that requirement contravenes my current preferences, goals, etc.?
It might of course be that I’d be punished if I did not or rewarded if I did – but Kant would say that considerations like that are just more examples of things that I could escape by altering my desires or being more careful about getting caught.
In the end, he says, only one thing could fill the role he’s marked out for morality: It has to have the form of law and it can’t be law derived from some source external to myself. It can’t come from God or family or tradition or custom because, about each of these, I can always ask the further question why I should go along with that, why it would be good or right to do so. Therefore, it has to be law that I legislate for myself. That’s what gives me reason to abide by or conform to it: It is law that I freely and rationally accept as governing my actions.
What constraints are there on the law that I can self-legislate? According to Kant, only one. It has to have the form of law. It has to be such that I could will (not would will or would wish) that it be universally acted upon.
I can start with any maxim, where a maxim is something like an underlying intention or plan for action. It’s my reason for acting put into the form of words. Then I raise the question, Can I will that this be universally followed or adhered to?. If the answer is Yes, then the action is permissible. If the answer is No, then it is not. Notice that obligations only come in to avoid acting on non-universalizable maxims. There are no direct requirements on acts or motivations. To illustrate this, suppose I’ve got only three options, A, B and C. I realize that neither B nor C can be universalized, so I have to act on A. But the test of universalizability doesn’t tell me directly to do A; it just rules out the other options. There is nothing that says, directly, I must be or must not be self-interested, loving, compassionate, productive, self-supporting, etc. The only requirement is that I not act “from� these motivations in a sense that implies I would do so even if the maxim of the action could not be universalized.
To wax rhetorical for a moment, Kant’s morality is a morality of and for free and rational persons. It says that what is required is only compliance with the law that we, considered as free and rational beings, give to ourselves.
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We can push this further and, indeed, Kant does. If morality comes from us, insofar as we are rational – if the distinctions of right and wrong, good and evil have their sources in what we choose, not in any source outside ourselves – then we must be pretty special. We bring value into the world – not just we bring about things that are (anyhow) valuable, but we, as free and rational beings who are able to select and pursue our own ends and goals, are the sources of there being any such thing as value at all. This is what Kant means by saying that people are ends in themselves. Other things, other goals, are good in their relation to some purpose or condition outside themselves: medicine is good for health, health is good for long life, food is good for the hungry – and so on. But being a free and rational being, having what Kant calls a good will (remember, he thinks that moral requirements are requirements of being rational) – is unconditionally good, good without regard to anything else that it might be good for or on condition of.
That leads him to a different formulation of the categorical imperative. (He says it is “at bottom, the same,� but he doesn’t spell out just how that is supposed to be so. What I’ve been doing is, somewhat speculatively, trying to show what he might have thought the connection was.) This version says:
Always so act that you treat humanity, whether in yourself or any other, as an end in itself, never as a means only.
By “humanity,� he’s talking about rational, end-setting beings. (So, in this sense, there could be Martians or other beings who were not at all related to us biologically who still count as “human.�)
Note that he is not saying that we should never treat others as means. Most of us probably couldn’t even survive if we didn’t. We treat farmers as means to supply us with food, builders as means to provide us with a place to stay, instructors as means to help us get an education .... What he is saying is that we shouldn’t treat others as means only. We should deal with others in ways such that they could accept the way we treat them. I do not treat the farmer as a means only because I am willing to pay him for the food he provides me, and he is willing to provide the food on those terms. I am respecting him as a being who sets his own ends, who determines for himself how he will act and interact with others. More generally, treating others as ends in themselves means not using force or deception or manipulation to get one’s own way. It means open, honest and respectful treatment of others.
