In obeying the moral laws that we can consistently and rationally will as universal laws, we follow the so-called “Categorical Imperative”, which can be restated: “Always act in such a way that the maximum value of your action can be simultaneously affirmed as a universal law.”
This is similar to the much older Biblical and Indian Golden Rule Mahabharataaccording to which we should treat others as we would like to be treated. But while the Golden Rule is based on personal preferences, which are subjective (I may be a masochist, for example, or willing to indulge in some misbehavior), the Categorical Imperative is based on reason, which is objective.
Hypothetical and categorical commands
Hypothetical imperatives are practical rules for achieving a desired result, for example, “If you want to lose weight, you need to watch what you eat.” You don’t have to follow the rules if you don’t want a certain result. In this case, hypothetical imperatives are conditional and conditional. In contrast, categorical commands are universal moral commands that bind everyone, regardless of their goals, for example, “do not lie”, “do not steal”, “do not coerce”. commit suicide“.
Hypothetical imperatives correspond to the lower capacity of desire that aims at pleasure. Categorical imperatives respond to the higher capacity of the will to act rationally and autonomously by obeying laws that legislate for itself, regardless of consequences or personal feelings.
For Kant, true moral action should be motivated by duty rather than a desired outcome. Thus, Kantian ethics is sometimes deontological or duty-based (Greek, deon“duty”) and contrasted with outcome-based consequences (eg, utilitarianism). For Kant, moral systems based on outcomes or desires affect hypothetical imperatives rather than actual moral law.
Some examples of categorical commands
Kant gives some examples to break the bones of the categorical imperative. Imagine a person in financial need who takes out a loan and promises to pay it back, knowing full well that he never will. If this action becomes universal, the practice of lending without trusting promises of repayment will end.
When we help someone, our action must be based on duty for it to have moral value. If I help someone out of an inclination, such as out of sympathy or because it makes me feel good, I am still doing something commendable, but my action is situational rather than principled and trustworthy, and has no moral value. Imagine always giving the correct change, but only to avoid getting caught and losing reputation. His behavior, although not culpable, has no moral value. If he knows he can’t get caught, he may behave dishonestly. Since his behavior is more circumspect and conditional than born of duty, it is not fixed.
For Kant, the paradigm of moral worth is a person who hates life and wishes to commit suicide, but who survives only without duty. Because this person has no desire to pursue his own interests, he acts only out of duty, not just.compliance to the task.” Likewise and paradoxically, a man with a hard heart like no other motivation has a “higher beyond comparison” moral value than duty.
The human formulation of the categorical imperative
The formula of universality is the first formula of the categorical imperative. The second formula is the formula of humanity, or the end in itself: “Always treat humanity in yourself and in others as an end and never as a mere means.”
Like Aristotle, Kant argued that anything that has instrumental value derives that value from the end it serves. Thus, for anything to have value, it must have an end that has intrinsic value, that is, an end in itself. For Aristotle, this was the “highest good.” happinessor eudaimonia. For Kant, it was a rational being who could freely determine his goals. In all of nature, man alone is an end in himself and should therefore be treated as such.
We can only use others (such as waiters and taxi drivers) as tools if we respect their goals and agency, treating them as rational beings with their own ends rather than mere tools to our own ends. If you can employ a servant, if you pay them and treat them fairly, and if the servant is willing, because it is in their self-interest to work for you. Although Kant never used the formula of humanism to clearly and unambiguously condemn the transatlantic slave trade, his moral philosophy later laid the groundwork for abolitionists.
Benjamin Constant’s Challenge to Kant
After the Reign of Terror (1793-1794), during the French Revolution, a period characterized by the mass execution of enemies, the Swiss writer Benjamin Constant devised a thought experiment to undermine Kant’s ethics.
Imagine an ax-wielding murderer at the door, asking where your friend who took refuge in your house is hiding. Although, according to Kant, a lie it’s always wrong, telling the truth and revealing your friend’s location to the killer would be stupid. In this scenario, the duty to protect your friend obviously outweighs any duty to tell the truth. Moreover, the murderer is deprived of any right to the truth by intending to commit a grave injustice.
Kant hit back at Constant in his 1797 essay On the Right to Lie Out of Good Intentions and dug in his heels. It would be wrong to lie under such circumstances. The morality of an action is not determined by its consequences, but by its principles. He didn’t know if lying to his hiding friend would do more good than harm. While the person is responsible for the consequences of telling a lie, the consequences of telling the truth are the responsibility of the murderer. Moreover, to lie to the murderer, to treat him merely as a means to an end, is to deny him the status of an intelligent being capable of free, rational action.
The only problem of Kant’s ethics and a possible solution
Kant’s strict application of the categorical imperative led him to condemn many actions and behaviors that are no longer condemned at all, such as premarital sex, etc. onanism. He called onanism “an unnatural vice”, hence its natural purpose sex is to give birth.
The categorical imperative is no doubt a good rule, but it must admit of exceptions. Exceptions are also a matter of judgment and reason—even more than the rules themselves.
This notion of equality is something Aristotle, the father of virtue ethics, already understood – for example, when he poignantly says:
Justice bids us pity the weakness of human nature; to think less of the laws and of what he meant than of the man who made the laws, but of what he said; failure to consider the defendant’s conduct more than his intent; this or that detail as well as the whole story; asking not what a person is now, but what he has always or usually been like.
The fact is that those who are willing to break the rules of justice themselves need justice.
Neel Burton is the author of a newly published book German Greeks: German Philosophy and German Philosophers.
