Leading 20 th century proponent of Kantianism: Professor Elizabeth Anscombe Basic Summary : Kant, unlike Mill, believed that certain types of actions including murder, theft, and lying were absolutely prohibited, even in cases where the action would bring about more happiness than the alternative. For Kantians, there are two questions that we must ask ourselves whenever we decide to act: i Can I rationally will that everyone act as I propose to act?
If the answer is no, then we must not perform the action. Again, if the answer is no, then we must not perform the action. Kant believed that these questions were equivalent. Kant believed that there was a supreme principle of morality, and he referred to it as The Categorical Imperative.
The CI determines what our moral duties are. Morality and imperatives : What does it mean for one's duty to be determined by the categorical imperative? What is an imperative? An imperative is a command.
So, "Pay your taxes! Hypothetical Imperatives : these imperatives command conditionally on your having a relevant desire. Another example, your father says, "if you are hungry, then go eat something!
Categorical Imperatives : These command unconditionally. What is the connection between morality and categorical imperatives? Morality must be based on the categorical imperative because morality is such that you are commanded by it, and is such that you cannot opt out of it or claim that it does not apply to you.
How does the categorical imperative work? The categorical imperative has three different formulations. That is to say, there are three different ways of saying what it is. Kant claims that all three do in fact say the same thing, but it is currently disputed whether this is true. The second formulation is the easiest to understand, but the first one is most clearly a categorical imperative. Here is the first formulation. A maxim is the rule or principle on which you act.
For example, I might make it my maxim to give at least as much to charity each year as I spend on eating out, or I might make it my maxim only to do what will benefit some member of my family. You are not allowed to make exceptions for yourself.
For example, if you expect other people to keep their promises, then you are obligated to keep your own promises. For example, if I wanted to lie to get something I wanted, I would have to be willing to make it the case that everyone always lied to get what they wanted - but if this were to happen no one would ever believe you, so the lie would not work and you would not get what you wanted.
So, if you willed that such a maxim of lying should become a universal law, then you would thwart your goal - thus, it is impermissible to lie, according to the categorical imperative. It is impermissible because the only way to lie is to make an exception for yourself.
Kant on Moral Worth. The Moral Worth of Persons : Kant also has something to say about what makes someone a good person. Keep in mind that Kant intends this to go along with the rest of his theory, and what one's duty is would be determined by the categorical imperative.
However, one can treat this as a separate theory to some extent, and consider that one's duty is determined by some other standard. Keep in mind that what is said below has to do with how one evaluates people, not actions. A person's actions are right or wrong, a person is morally worthy or lacks moral worth i. A person's actions determine her moral worth, but there is more to this than merely seeing if the actions are right or wrong. By "motivation" I mean what caused you to do the action i.
Kant argues that one can have moral worth i. In other words, if a person's emotions or desires cause them to do something, then that action cannot give them moral worth. This may sound odd, but there is good reason to agree with Kant. I look around for what would be the most fun to do with it: buy a yacht, travel in first class around the world, get that knee operation, etc..
I decide that what would be really fun is to give the money to charity and to enjoy that special feeling you get from making people happy, so I give all my lottery money away. Given that, insofar as we are rational, we must will to develop capacities, it is by this very fact irrational not to do so.
However, mere failure to conform to something we rationally will is not yet immorality. Failure to conform to instrumental principles, for instance, is irrational but not always immoral. This is a claim he uses not only to distinguish assertoric from problematic imperatives, but also to argue for the imperfect duty of helping others G He also appears to rely on this claim in each of his examples. Each maxim he is testing appears to have happiness as its aim. One explanation for this is that, since each person necessarily wills her own happiness, maxims in pursuit of this goal will be the typical object of moral evaluation.
Second, we must assume, as also seems reasonable, that a necessary means to achieving normal human happiness is not only that we ourselves develop some talent, but also that others develop some capacities of theirs at some time. For instance, I cannot engage in the normal pursuits that make up my own happiness, such as playing piano, writing philosophy or eating delicious meals, unless I have developed some talents myself, and, moreover, someone else has made pianos and written music, taught me writing, harvested foods and developed traditions of their preparation.
Thus, we should assume that, necessarily, rational agents will the necessary and available means to any ends that they will. And once we add this to the assumptions that we must will our own happiness as an end, and that developed talents are necessary means to achieving that end, it follows that we cannot rationally will that a world come about in which it is a law that no one ever develops any of their natural talents.
We cannot do so, because our own happiness is the very end contained in the maxim of giving ourselves over to pleasure rather than self-development. Since we will the necessary and available means to our ends, we are rationally committed to willing that everyone sometime develop his or her talents. So since we cannot will as a universal law of nature that no one ever develop any talents — given that it is inconsistent with what we now see that we rationally will — we are forbidden from adopting the maxim of refusing to develop any of our own.
This formulation states that we should never act in such a way that we treat humanity, whether in ourselves or in others, as a means only but always as an end in itself. Intuitively, there seems something wrong with treating human beings as mere instruments with no value beyond this.
But this very intuitiveness can also invite misunderstandings. First, the Humanity Formula does not rule out using people as means to our ends. Clearly this would be an absurd demand, since we apparently do this all the time in morally appropriate ways. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any life that is recognizably human without the use of others in pursuit of our goals. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the chairs we sit on and the computers we type at are gotten only by way of talents and abilities that have been developed through the exercise of the wills of many people.
What the Humanity Formula rules out is engaging in this pervasive use of humanity in such a way that we treat it as a mere means to our ends.
Thus, the difference between a horse and a taxi driver is not that we may use one but not the other as a means of transportation. Thus, supposing that the taxi driver has freely exercised his rational capacities in pursuing his line of work, we make permissible use of these capacities as a means only if we behave in a way that he could, when exercising his rational capacities, consent to — for instance, by paying an agreed on price.
Third, the idea of an end has three senses for Kant, two positive senses and a negative sense. An end in the first positive sense is a thing we will to produce or bring about in the world.
For instance, if losing weight is my end, then losing weight is something I aim to bring about. An end in this sense guides my actions in that once I will to produce something, I then deliberate about and aim to pursue means of producing it if I am rational. Once I have adopted an end in this sense, it dictates that I do something: I should act in ways that will bring about the end or instead choose to abandon my goal.
An end in the negative sense lays down a law for me as well, and so guides action, but in a different way. Korsgaard offers self-preservation as an example of an end in a negative sense: We do not try to produce our self-preservation.
Rather, the end of self-preservation prevents us from engaging in certain kinds of activities, for instance, picking fights with mobsters, and so on. That is, as an end, it is something I do not act against in pursuing my positive ends, rather than something I produce.
Humanity is in the first instance an end in this negative sense: It is something that limits what I may do in pursuit of my other ends, similar to the way that my end of self-preservation limits what I may do in pursuit of other ends.
Insofar as it limits my actions, it is a source of perfect duties. Now many of our ends are subjective in that they are not ends that every rational being must have. Humanity is an objective end, because it is an end that every rational being must have.
Hence, my own humanity as well as the humanity of others limit what I am morally permitted to do when I pursue my other, non-mandatory, ends. The humanity in myself and others is also a positive end, though not in the first positive sense above, as something to be produced by my actions. Rather, it is something to realize, cultivate or further by my actions. Becoming a philosopher, pianist or novelist might be my end in this sense.
When my end is becoming a pianist, my actions do not, or at least not simply, produce something, being a pianist, but constitute or realize the activity of being a pianist. Insofar as the humanity in ourselves must be treated as an end in itself in this second positive sense, it must be cultivated, developed or fully actualized.
And insofar as humanity is a positive end in others, I must attempt to further their ends as well. In so doing, I further the humanity in others, by helping further the projects and ends that they have willingly adopted for themselves. Proper regard for something with absolute value or worth requires respect for it. But this can invite misunderstandings. When I respect you in this way, I am positively appraising you in light of some achievement or virtue you possess relative to some standard of success.
If this were the sort of respect Kant is counseling then clearly it may vary from person to person and is surely not what treating something as an end-in-itself requires. For instance, it does not seem to prevent me from regarding rationality as an achievement and respecting one person as a rational agent in this sense, but not another.
And Kant is not telling us to ignore differences, to pretend that we are blind to them on mindless egalitarian grounds. In such cases of respecting you because of who or what you are, I am giving the proper regard to a certain fact about you, your being a Dean for instance. This sort of respect, unlike appraisal respect, is not a matter of degree based on your having measured up to some standard of assessment. We are to respect human beings simply because they are persons and this requires a certain sort of regard.
We are not called on to respect them insofar as they have met some standard of evaluation appropriate to persons. And, crucially for Kant, persons cannot lose their humanity by their misdeeds — even the most vicious persons, Kant thought, deserve basic respect as persons with humanity.
Although Kant does not state this as an imperative, as he does in the other formulations, it is easy enough to put it in that form: Act so that through your maxims you could be a legislator of universal laws. This sounds very similar to the first formulation.
However, in this case we focus on our status as universal law givers rather than universal law followers. This is of course the source of the very dignity of humanity Kant speaks of in the second formulation. A rational will that is merely bound by universal laws could act accordingly from natural and non-moral motives, such as self-interest. But in order to be a legislator of universal laws, such contingent motives, motives that rational agents such as ourselves may or may not have, must be set aside.
Hence, we are required, according to this formulation, to conform our behavior to principles that express this autonomy of the rational will — its status as a source of the very universal laws that obligate it. The Autonomy Formula presumably does this by putting on display the source of our dignity and worth, our status as free rational agents who are the source of the authority behind the very moral laws that bind us.
This formulation has gained favor among Kantians in recent years see Rawls, ; Hill, Many see it as introducing more of a social dimension to Kantian morality. The intuitive idea behind this formulation is that our fundamental moral obligation is to act only on principles which could earn acceptance by a community of fully rational agents each of whom have an equal share in legislating these principles for their community.
Kant claimed that all of these CI formulas were equivalent. Unfortunately, he does not say in what sense. Thus, his claim that the formulations are equivalent could be interpreted in a number of ways. There are remaining doubts some commentators have, however, about whether this strategy can capture the full meaning of the Humanity Formula or explain all of the duties that Kant claims to derive from it Wood , ; Cureton Perhaps, then, if the formulas are not equivalent in meaning, they are nevertheless logically interderivable and hence equivalent in this sense.
That would have the consequence that the CI is a logical truth, and Kant insists that it is not or at least that it is not analytic. Since the CI formulas are not logical truths, then, it is possible that they could be logically interderivable. However, despite his claim that each contains the others within it, what we find in the Groundwork seems best interpreted as a derivation of each successive formula from the immediately preceding formula.
There are, nonetheless, a few places in which it seems that Kant is trying to work in the opposite direction. One is found in his discussion of the Humanity Formula. But he postulates humanity is absolutely valuable. Thus , we must act only on maxims that can be universal laws. This we think anomolous discussion may well get at some deep sense in which Kant thought the formulations were equivalent. Nonetheless, this derivation of the universal law formulation from the Humanity Formulation seems to require a substantive, synthetic claim, namely, that humanity is indeed absolutely valuable.
The most straightforward interpretation of the claim that the formulas are equivalent is as the claim that following or applying each formula would generate all and only the same duties Allison This seems to be supported by the fact that Kant used the same examples through the Law of Nature Formula and the Humanity Formula. In other words, respect for humanity as an end in itself could never lead you to act on maxims that would generate a contradiction when universalized, and vice versa.
The subjective differences between formulas are presumably differences that appeal in different ways to various conceptions of what morality demands of us.
But this difference in meaning is compatible with there being no practical difference, in the sense that conformity to one formulation cannot lead one to violate another formulation.
Most readers interpret Kant as holding that autonomy is a property of rational wills or agents. It contains first and foremost the idea of laws made and laid down by oneself, and, in virtue of this, laws that have decisive authority over oneself.
Consider how political freedom in liberal theories is thought to be related to legitimate political authority: A state is free when its citizens are bound only by laws in some sense of their own making — created and put into effect, say, by vote or by elected representatives. The laws of that state then express the will of the citizens who are bound by them.
An autonomous state is thus one in which the authority of its laws is in the will of the people in that state, rather than in the will of a people external to that state, as when one state imposes laws on another during occupation or colonization.
In the latter case, the laws have no legitimate authority over those citizens. In a similar fashion, we may think of a person as free when bound only by her own will and not by the will of another. Her actions then express her own will and not the will of someone or something else. The authority of the principles binding her will is then also not external to her will. It comes from the fact that she willed them. So autonomy, when applied to an individual, ensures that the source of the authority of the principles that bind her is in her own will.
For a contrasting interpretation of autonomy that emphasizes the intrinsic value of freedom of choice and the instrumental role of reason in preserving that value, see Guyer This is, firstly, the concept of a will that does not operate through the influence of factors outside of this responsiveness to apparent reasons.
For a will to be free is thus for it to be physically and psychologically unforced in its operation. Hence, behaviors that are performed because of obsessions or thought disorders are not free in this negative sense. But also, for Kant, a will that operates by being determined through the operation of natural laws, such as those of biology or psychology, cannot be thought of as operating by responding to reasons. Hence, determination by natural laws is conceptually incompatible with being free in a negative sense.
Indeed, Kant goes out of his way in his most famous work, the Critique of Pure Reason , to argue that we have no rational basis for believing our wills to be free. Of such things, he insists, we can have no knowledge. For much the same reason, Kant is not claiming that a rational will cannot operate without feeling free. What is the difference? We treat people as a means to our own ends in ways that are not morally problematic quite often.
When I go to the post office, I treat the clerk as a means to my end of sending a letter. But I do not treat that person merely as a means to my own end. I pursue my end of sending a letter through my interaction with the clerk only with the understanding that the clerk is acting autonomously in serving me.
My interaction with the clerk is morally acceptable so long as the clerk is serving me voluntarily, or acting autonomously for his own reasons. By contrast, we use someone merely as a means to our own ends if we force them to do our will, or if we deceive them into doing our will. Coercion and deception are paradigm violations of the categorical imperative. In coercing or deceiving another person, we disrupt their autonomy and violate their will.
As part of the Enlightenment tradition, Kant based his ethical theory on the belief that reason should be used to determine how people ought to act. In his combined works, Kant constructed the basis for an ethical law from the concept of duty. No other virtue has this status because every other virtue can be used to achieve immoral ends the virtue of loyalty is not good if one is loyal to an evil person, for example.
The good will is unique in that it is always good and maintains its moral value even when it fails to achieve its moral intentions. For Kant a good will is a broader conception than a will which acts from duty.
A will which acts from duty is distinguishable as a will which overcomes hindrances in order to keep the moral law. A dutiful will is thus a special case of a good will which becomes visible in adverse conditions. Kant argues that only acts performed with regard to duty have moral worth. This is not to say that acts performed merely in accordance with duty are worthless these still deserve approval and encouragement , but that special esteem is given to acts which are performed out of duty.
Thus, when an agent performs an action from duty it is because the rational incentives matter to them more than their opposing inclinations.
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