summary of KANTIAN ETHICS

EXAM: KANTIAN ETHICS

            According to Kant, there is only one thing that is good without qualifications, and this is a goodwill. All other things we generally consider as good are not unconditionally good; there goodness needs to be qualified because they can become bad when misused. Intelligence, courage and wealth for instance, are all good but can become bad when misused, such as using intelligence to commit crimes for instance. A good will is good in itself and is always good. What then is a good will? According to Kant, a good will is a will which acts for the sake of duty. Kant distinguishes between ‘acting for the sake of duty’ and ‘acting according to duty.’ On the one hand, to act for the sake of duty (or to act from duty) is to act, not because one hopes to gain anything from the action, not because one just feels like doing it or because one has a natural inclination to doing such things, but purely out of reverence for the moral law. In other words, it means doing something because the moral law demands it, even if one stands to lose materially from such an action.

On the other hand, to act according to duty is to act out of prudent considerations for one’s interests. Kant does not say that such actions are bad, but that they have no moral worth, they are not praiseworthy. The same applies to actions done in accordance with natural inclinations or tendencies. Such actions, Kant says, may be good, but they have no moral worth. For an action to have moral value, it must be performed strictly for the sake of duty, that is, in reverence for the moral law.

            If we are simply following our natural inclinations in our actions or if we act only because we hope to derive some material benefits from such actions, our actions have no moral value. The moral value of an action does not depend on the result of the action, but on the fact that it was performed strictly for the sake of duty, that is, out of reverence for the moral law. Kant links together, the concepts of duty and the moral law. Duty, he says, ‘is the necessity of acting out of reverence for the moral law.’ However, Kant acknowledges the possibility of having our obligation coincide with our pleasure. In the event of conflict, Kant says, priority must be given to duty. To Kant, man’s moral consciousness functions in terms of duty. It is on this basis that Kant formulates the supreme principles of morality as imperatives. He however adds a proviso by saying that they are imperatives only to a man as a rational being because it is only to such a man that morality comes as a command since he has a conscience.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN HYPOTHETICAL AND CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES

            Kant, divided obligation into the hypothetical and the categorical. According to Kant, there are basically two kinds of imperatives, namely, a hypothetical and a categorical imperative. According to Kant, a hypothetical imperative is a subtle command to a person telling him/her to do something as a means to an end. While, in contrast to hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative, is an unconditional imperative; a command whose force is absolute and applies to all men in every actual or possible moral situation. Kant calls it an ‘apodectic practical principle.’

THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

Kant’s theory is unmitigatedly deontological, placing the issues of duty and justice before the issues of good. The procedure that specifies the content of duty is the categorical imperative or “unconditional command” of morality.  Kant explained the categorical imperative in several distinct forms.  Even though these forms give us several ways of generating duties, Kant maintained that his systematic ethics of duties was rigorous—that no duties would conflict, in practice.  The two forms that are most often called “the” categorical imperative go as follows: 

“Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”

A maxim in Kant’s theory is a plan of action, so here he gives us an ethical test for our intended actions, presumably to be used before we commit them.  The point of the test is that we ought to be able to endorse the “universal” acceptability of the plans or intentions behind our actions.  We should not be partial to our plans simply because they are ours; they must be acceptable from any point of view thus, they must possess an inevitable feature of cross-contextuality, cross-culturality and intersubjective confirmability.  Maxims that cannot be universalized will produce and tantamount to a logical contradiction or “disharmony” when they are to run through the test of the categorical imperative. The grounding or validation of this principle lies in the universality of practical reason.  For Kant, our ethical duties arise from what is common to us as rational beings.  Humans have a kind of freedom which is gained in “creating” universal moral laws in our intentional behavior—a kind of self-legislation or autonomy that allows us to transcend our animal nature. 

The ability of humans to act from freely chosen moral rules explains the special moral status we enjoy; humans are, according to Kant, “ends-in-themselves.”  Consequently, this status gives rise to another formulation of the categorical imperative:

“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity [yours or another person's] never merely as a means but always at the same time as an end-in-itself.” 

This special moral status or intrinsic value implies that humans ought never to be valued as less significant than things that have merely instrumental value. Things of instrumental value are mere tools, and though they can be traded off with one another, they can never be more important than intrinsically valuable things.  Significantly, all technology is in some sense a mere tool; no matter how many resources our society pours into technologies, the moral status of humans is supposed to trump the value of mere tools.  Kant’s categorical imperatives are designed to protect that status. 

THE SOURCE OF THE MORAL LAW

            What is the source of the moral law? The moral law, as seen, is a categorical imperative which unconditionally obliges all men without exception. It is not based on anything external to the rational will, otherwise it would not be categorical and unconditional because the will can always say ‘NO’ to anything or any offer outside itself. The will can never be unconditionally determined by anything outside itself. Therefore, if the source of the moral law were anything outside the will itself, or if it were grounded on any offer (such as heaven or God), the will can say ‘NO’ to the end and therefore would not feel itself obliged to take the means leading to it. In that case, the moral law would not be a categorical imperative, but rather a hypothetical imperative.

            In short, because the moral law is categorical, and because man’s will is free, nothing outside the will itself can be the source or the ground of the moral law. It follows then, that man’s rational will itself is the source of the moral law, and consequently, the moral law is a self-imposed law. It is therefore man’s rational will which imposes on itself the moral law.

Hence, Categorical imperatives best applies to moral law.

SOME CRITICISMS OF KANT’S CAETGORICAL IMPERATIVES

While Kant’s view is an incredibly rich and thought out theory, it has been beset with some major problems. One problem is that Kant reduces morality down into this emotionless acting upon the maxims and the rigidity and inflexibility of his formulation. This is where Kantian Ethics converges with Stoicism. By getting rid of emotion, Kant gets rid of a key feature of what it means to be a human being. By proposing an emotionless acting upon maxims, Kant inevitably proposes an impossible emotionless super-human. This is where his views can be faulted.

On another hand, Kant’s duty for duty sake postulation seems difficult to accept because certain acts can be good even if it is not in response to the call of duty. There could be higher motives than duty. Kant did not forestall the problem where men may simply carry duty to a ridiculous as well as perilous point. This will be absurd and Kant leaves the stage of checking against this possibility bare.