by Robert Wicks
With respect to determining an action’s moral value, Kant’s question is simple: does the maxim of my action make sense in reference to me as a rational being in general? At this point, we are no longer thinking of the maxim merely in reference to ‘me’ as a single individual, but to ‘me’ in a wider, truer sense, as an equal member of humanity as a whole and as a rational being. If the more broadly formulated, more inclusive maxim does not make sense, and if we perform the action nonetheless, then we are being irrational, and are disrespecting ourselves as rational beings. To do this would be to act neither from duty nor from a good will, but immorally.
Let us, then, consider the rationality of the generalized maxim in our example: ‘in any situation where one (i.e., anyone) can escape embarrassment only by telling a lie, then tell the lie’. Since we are considering the action from the standpoint of being a human in general, the maxim is potentially a rule that everyone would be following. It could be formulated as: ‘for any human being, in any situation where one can escape embarrassment only by telling a lie, then tell the lie’. Does it still make sense at this level of generalization?
It is intriguing to see that once this maxim is generalized, it self-destructs. Once everyone consequently assumes that anyone to whom they are speaking is likely to be lying, ‘lying’ per se would be impossible. Since telling a lie involves presenting a falsehood as a truth, no lies can be told if, at the outset, no one expects that the truth is being told. Once the maxim about lying under pressure is generalized across all contexts and people, deception becomes impossible and telling lies no longer makes sense. The situation compares to how, once it becomes common knowledge that a social organization has been continually lying to the people, the organization’s ‘true’ pronouncements no longer count as having any prima facie truth.
Since the generalized maxim falls apart, it is a non-entity that no one can adopt. In view of the maxim’s irrationality, Kant concludes that lying under duress is immoral. The formula for this style of decision making and moral assessment, and Kant’s consequent expression of the unconditional moral directive associated with it, is as follows:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
(Groundwork, Second Section)
Kant refers to this as the ‘categorical’ imperative. It is an absolute command that issues from our being rational. The imperative’s necessity compares to that of the categories of the understanding, insofar as the latter issue from our being logical. We carry the categorical imperative and the categories of the understanding into worldly experience as an expression of what we essentially are. In this regard, the categorical imperative is not optional or conditional. For us, it is unconditional, for it does not say conditionally that ‘if’ we happen to want such-and-such, ‘then’ we should do this or that to obtain it. It is not a ‘hypothetical imperative’. As an expression of our inner being, the categorical imperative is ‘necessary’ for us and is knowable a priori.
The conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason begins with the often-quoted remark that ‘two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’. Kant is here conceiving of two, fully developed systems of law, natural law and moral law. He realizes that our moral activity shows its effects in the spatio-temporal world wherein natural law determines all events, so the universalized maxims that we adopt for moral activity must be compatible with natural law.
Our reason, located independently of the spatio-temporal world, imposes upon us as spatio-temporal beings, the obligation to act in a consistent way. Since it is irrational to conceive of reason itself as being irrational, reason can obligate us to act in such-and-such a way within the spatio-temporal world only if it is possible for us to act in such a way. ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’. If so, then the moral law must cohere with the natural law.
To express the compatibility between morality and nature, Kant offers a second formulation of the categorical imperative, much like the first, which is to ‘act as though the maxim of your action were to become by your will, a universal law of nature’ (Groundwork, Second Section). This calls up the image of everyone in the world acting in social harmony, akin to how the planets and celestial bodies move together in harmony within the natural system of the physical universe. ‘Activity according to law’ is the idea shared by two systems of law, moral and physical.
Since acting from duty alone is a matter of acting out of respect for oneself as a rational, law-giving being, having a good will is having self-respect as a free human being. Given this tight connection between duty and self-respect, yet another way to express the categorical imperative is to require that we always respect the humanity in ourselves and in everyone else. This yields a third formulation of the categorical imperative, expressive of the dignity of the human being: ‘act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, in every case as an end and never as a means only’ (Groundwork, Second Section).
These three formulations of the categorical imperative provide alternative, but as Kant intends, equivalent, ways to conceptualize the morality of various actions. The third formulation is perhaps the most intuitive, easiest to grasp and apply, as it prescribes that out of respect for ourselves and others, for instance, we honour our parents and other people, that we do not murder, steal, or lie, and that we refrain from abusing ourselves.
Key idea: The categorical imperative
This is the unconditional moral command to act consistently. It differs from merely pragmatic or ‘hypothetical’ directives which prescribe that ‘if’ one wants such and such, ‘then’ do this or that. Unlike hypothetical imperatives, the categorical imperative is a steadfast expression of the respect for law itself.
Kant’s overall approach to morality – one which is grounded in the single principle of respecting the concept of law, independently of the sensuous, spatio-temporal world – further instructs us not to confuse this single principle of morality with sensuous imagery and other principles that mistakenly purport to express the true morality, such as worldly happiness. Echoing the first of the Ten Commandments, which prescribes that we recognize ‘no other gods’, we can see in Kant’s insistence that the categorical imperative is the sole determinant of moral value, that his moral theory, in conjunction with the above comments and examples, can be appreciated as having been inspired by the Ten Commandments, whose foundation he is rethinking carefully at the height of intellectual sophistication, abstraction and refinement.
No theory is perfect, and Kant’s moral theory has some difficulties to resolve. First of all, when applying the categorical imperative to actual situations, the maxim of the action in question needs to be formulated with some reasonable honesty. Consider the maxim above concerning lying under duress. It is easy to escape responsibility by formulating the maxim narrowly such as ‘for any human being, and for any situation in this room at noon on 8 July 1947, where one can escape embarrassment only by telling a lie, then tell the lie’.
If interpreted within the narrow circumstances described, the maxim may still fall apart, since no one in the room could reasonably will the maxim, but if the maxim is more extensively situated within an ordinary-world context, where telling the truth remains common practice, the maxim’s generalization will not have any widespread effect on the meaning of truth-telling. The exact level at which we should formulate any particular maxim is consequently unclear, as is how we should characterize the measure of honesty and wisdom required to formulate it responsibly.
In addition to the case of lying under duress, Kant applies the categorical imperative to conclude that we should not commit suicide, that we should develop our talents, and that we should help other people in distress. If we accept these prescriptions, even admitting that the latter two duties are less pressing, it can be difficult to see how to formula
te the maxims of one’s actions when the prescriptions come into conflict.
On certain occasions – and Kant offers some of these examples himself – one might decide to commit suicide to defend one’s country, as did the Japanese kamikaze pilots during World War II, or to commit suicide in the face of an agonizing death from disease. Similarly, one might decide to perpetuate a lie by respecting the orders of a governmental or military superior, aware that the lie’s effectiveness will cause many innocent people to die. Less intensely, one might need to tell lies to secure the best opportunity to develop one’s talents, or one might find developing one’s talents to be so demanding, that it requires the serious neglect of other people’s needs. It is a challenge to resolve these conflict-filled situations through an application of the categorical imperative alone.
Objections to Kant’s moral theory also arise from those who find that excluding love and compassion from the determination of moral value is inconsistent with ordinary practice. Others maintain that the categorical imperative, at least in its first formulation, is an unrealistic abstraction, since no one ever uses it when making moral decisions and assessments. Still others find it difficult to accept that we should set aside the consequences of a person’s action when determining its moral value, discerning, for instance, a significant moral difference – one that the law and common opinion recognizes – between attempted murder and actual murder.
Dig Deeper
Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology (Cornell University Press, 1995)
Paul Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law and Happiness (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Jens Timmerman, Kant’s ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’: A Critical Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Allen Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Study questions
1 Why is having a set of virtues or being wealthy not sufficient for having a good will?
2 How can morality be based on the mere concept of law itself?
3 What is the difference between acting from duty and acting merely in accord with duty?
4 What does it mean for an imperative to be ‘categorical’, as opposed to ‘hypothetical’?
5 To determine whether an action is morally permissible, why do we need to generalize the maxim of the action?
6 How are the Ten Commandments related to the categorical imperative?
7 In Kant’s moral theory, how are rationality, morality, duty and self-respect interrelated?
8 Three different formulations of the categorical imperative were mentioned. How are these related to each other?
9 How does the phrase ‘ought implies can’ concern the harmony of nature and morality?
10 What are four objections to Kant’s moral theory?
12
God, virtue and evil
Kant’s moral theory culminates in a vision of society where everyone acts from a sense of duty and is awarded happiness to realize the highest good. This chapter outlines Kant’s idealized social vision, explaining how it is founded upon the three postulates of practical reason: freedom, immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the problem of evil as expressed through the Book of Job. We will see that Kant’s moral theory accounts for the source of Job’s unyielding faith and sense of personal dignity in the face of crushing personal hardship, and provides a practical attitude towards the presence of evil in the world.
1 The ‘realm of ends’ and the highest good
It may sound self-evident to say that throughout Kant’s philosophy, human experience is interpreted exclusively from the standpoint of being human. Our experience, however, can be interpreted from a variety of standpoints. We might ask instead of some situation, ‘Is it good for our family?’, ‘Is it good for our nation?’, ‘Is it good for our religion?’, ‘Is it good for our corporation?’, ‘Is it good for my career?’, and so on. In contrast to these more restricted standpoints, thinking universally and exclusively ‘as a human being’ is relatively uncommon. It takes an especially broad-minded person to set aside considerations such as family, nation, religion and workplace to act and interpret the world exclusively as a human being per se.
Speaking as a human being in general, Kant describes in his theory of knowledge how all possible human experience must occur as a set of causally connected objects in space and time. Also speaking for everyone in his moral theory, he argues how we should consider our moral actions as being performed exclusively by the ‘humanity’ within us. This perspective reveals a strong social dimension to Kant’s philosophy. To universalize successfully the maxim of one’s action in accord with the categorical imperative, is for the humanity within us to legislate for humanity as a whole, and to view our actions in relation to billions of people in a great, systematic community. Kant describes the situation in the following:
…every rational being must act as if, by his maxims, he were in every case a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends. The formal principle of these maxims is: So act as if thy maxim were to serve likewise as the universal law (of all rational beings).
(Groundwork, Second Section)
Insofar as each of us is a timelessly free, autonomous, rational and self-respecting agent, to be treated never as a means only but always also as an end in itself, our activity participates in a ‘realm’ (Reich) of ends, or moral social system. This realm of ends is an abstraction. It is an idealized community of people, all of whom act morally, and all of whom thereby deserve happiness. Notwithstanding its status as an idealization, since within this realm everyone acts only from duty, happiness is not a necessary part of the realm of ends.
In English translations of Kant’s writings, the realm of ends is sometimes called the ‘kingdom of ends’, but there is no ‘king’ or monarchy involved. If described in phrasings from political philosophy, each person is a ‘legislative member’ in this realm and reason itself is the sovereign, embodied equally and throughout the inner being of its citizenship. The laws within the realm therefore express the rational will of the community as a whole. Within this world of purified humanity, one acts as part of an ideal society where the laws are instituted according to everyone’s single and univocal voice, and where every person consequently follows human dictates and is in that sense, free.
The duty to turn this idealized moral realm into a reality requires Kant to reintroduce some central ideas from the Dialectic of Pure Reason in the first Critique. Since reason requires that we act from duty and prescribes an ideal moral condition wherein all of our actions issue from a respect for duty, Kant asks whether to realize this realm of perfected humanity, we need to suppose anything further. We know that morality presupposes that we are free. To cultivate oneself morally to the point where actions are always done from duty, with a virtually holy attitude, however, requires some time. Indeed, Kant believes that it requires infinite time, so to complete morality’s demands, he maintains that we must postulate the soul’s immortality, ‘an endless duration of the existence and personality of the same rational being’ (Critique of Practical Reason, Book II, Chapter II, Section IV).
We are familiar with the immortality of the soul from Kant’s discussion of the Paralogisms in the first Critique. Here in his moral theory, his view is that although no one can prove that the soul is immortal, the soul’s immortality must be postulated to fulfill our duty. Without this postulate, one cannot expect the realm of ends to be realized.
The culminating interest in Kant’s moral theory, however, resides at an even more demanding level than rendering the realm of ends into a reality. This interest is to create ‘the highest good’, or what Kant sometimes calls the ‘kingdom of God’, (i.e., the ‘realm of God’). It is a perfect society where everyone’s worthiness to be happy in the realm of ends is brought to
fruition with everyone actually being happy in proportion to that worthiness.
How then, Kant asks, is this highest good possible? His answer is that the harmony of duty and happiness entails that we presuppose (1) the conditions necessary for a world where everyone always acts only from duty, and (2) the conditions necessary for coordinating this thoroughly moral world with happiness, which is what the members of this perfected moral world deserve.
Postulating the soul’s immortality renders possible the first of these two requirements, namely, the realm of ends where everyone acts only from duty. The second is more of a challenge, since happiness is not implied by acting from duty alone. All of humanity might act with virtually a holy will and deserve to be happy, but no happiness need be forthcoming. To render possible the complete harmony of happiness and duty, or alternatively described, nature and morality, in the highest good, Kant maintains that we must postulate an all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful intelligence which can coordinate nature and morality into a single system. This is God, whose existence becomes morally necessary thereby. The starry skies above and the moral law within ultimately coincide through God.
