AN APPRAISAL OF KANT CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE


Introduction
            This paper appraises the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) which carries the essential mark of his deontological typology of ethics. Largely therefore, the concern of this work would be the appraisal of the three celebrated formulations of Kant’s categorical imperative, the basic form of which is: “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.[1] It is instructive to note that in Kant’s treatment of the categorical imperative, there are actually five formulations.[2] All of them are however, one imperative stated in different ways.[3] By and large, this paper shall feature how Immanuel Kant derives the categorical imperative and its formulations especially in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals[4] written in 1785.
Dutiful Actions as the Fulcrum of Kantian Morality
The good will, the only thing good without qualification,[5] is, for Immanuel Kant, the will that is at the basis of dutiful actions. However, morality comes from performing actions for the sake of duty. Accordingly, Kant, in the Groundwork, delineates three criteria for dutiful, moral actions. The first criterion is that: only actions done from duty have moral worth.[6] The concept of duty is very fundamental to Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy. For Kant, actions carried out in mere conformity with duty, and out of fear, lack moral content. Actions done out of inclination as inclination, lack moral worth. Only actions done from duty have moral content. Thus: “if the unhappy one, strong of soul, more indignant than pusillanimous or dejected over his fate, wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it, not from inclination or fear, but from duty: then his maxim has a moral content.”[7] This would evidently make the virtue ethicist uncomfortable.
The second criterion is that: the moral worth of an action, that is an action done from duty, does not lie in the aim or goal the action is supposed to attain, but in the maxim that underpins such an action. Consequently, “worth depends not on the actuality of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of the volition, in accordance with which the action is done, without regard to any object of the faculty of desire.”[8] It appears reasonable for one to say that this criterion positions itself as a rebuttal of the consequentialist, teleological,[9] approach to morality.
Furthermore, Immanuel Kant notes that the third criterion follows from the first two and is that: “Duty is the necessity of an action from respect for the law.”[10] The moral action then, the action done from duty, is such that the agent does it out of respect for the command, the law, which is objective and may not accord with the inclinations of the moral agent. However, commanded actions are stated as imperatives.
The Imperatives: Hypothetical and Categorical
            For Immanuel Kant, “[t]he representation of an objective principle, insofar as it is necessitating for a will, is called a ‘command’ (of reason), and the formula of the command is called an imperative.”[11] He notes that imperatives express to an imperfect will[12] what ought to be done and so:
[I]ndicate the relation of an objective law of reason to a will which in its subjective constitution is not necessarily determined by that law (a necessitation). They say that it would be good to do or refrain from something, but they say it to a will that does not always do something just because it is represented to it as good to do.[13]

            Furthermore, two imperatives are identified in relation to an imperfect will: hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Hypothetical imperatives “represent the practical necessity of a possible action as a means to attain something else which one wills.”[14] The hypothetical imperative determines a course of action as a means to an end, hence, Paul Guyer notes that hypothetical imperatives “are reason's representations of the means to desired ends.”[15] The hypothetical imperative can be stated in the form: “Do X so as to achieve Y” or “Do X if you want Y.”[16] On the contrary, “[t]he categorical imperative would be that one which represented an action as objectively necessary for itself, without any reference to another end.”[17] The categorical imperative commands an action that is good in itself. This species of imperatives, for Immanuel Kant, is what grounds morality. This why he would avow that:
[T]here is one imperative that, without being grounded on any other aim to be achieved through a certain course of conduct as its condition, commands this conduct immediately. This imperative is categorical. It has to do not with the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with the form and the principle from which it results; and what is essentially good about it consists in the disposition, whatever the result may be. This imperative may be called that of morality.[18]

The Categorical Imperative: the Principle of Morality
Morality, the rightness or otherwise of actions follows from the categorical imperative and never from the hypothetical. The categorical imperative is therefore the principle of morality, the universal principle of duty. Immanuel Kant notes that the imperative of morality “alone can be stated as a practical law”[19] and as the unconditioned command, it “leaves the will no free discretion in regard to the opposite, hence it alone carries with it that necessity which we demand for a law.”[20] What it proposes as the course of action cannot be negotiated. It must apply semper et ubique.[21]  It must be derived a priori. Thus Kant notes that:
If I think of a hypothetical imperative in general, then I do not know beforehand what it will contain until the condition is given to me. But if I think of a categorical imperative, then I know directly 3what it contains. For since besides the law, the imperative contains only the necessity of the maxim, that it should accord with this law, but the law contains no condition to which it is limited, there remains nothing left over with which the maxim of the action is to be in accord, and this accordance alone is what the imperative really represents necessarily.[22]

            The categorical imperative is thus given as: “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.[23] Commentators on Kantian moral philosophy observe that this notion of universalizability cuts across Immanuel Kant’s three known formulations of the categorical imperative.[24] This reasoning about Kant’s categorical imperative can itself be attributed to Kant himself who notes that the above stated imperative is the only one, thus “[t]he three ways mentioned of representing the principle of morality are, however, fundamentally only so many formulas of precisely the same law, one of which unites the other two in itself.”[25]
Nonetheless, the first formulation of the categorical imperative, a derivation from the basic form aforementioned is known as the “principle of the law of nature[26] and it states: “So act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.”[27] The categorical imperative can be stated in the form of the principle of the law of nature because by nature Immanuel Kant refers to “the existence of things insofar as it is determined in accordance with universal laws.”[28] This means that such actions must be practical or possible. To therefore demonstrate how the categorical imperative derives from and applies to practical or possible actions Kant discusses four actions that come across as duties and tests them against the principle of the law of nature. For him an action is rejected as immoral if upon an attempt to universalize its maxim, a contradiction is encountered. If an action cannot be accommodated in the imperative of duty, the imperative of morality, then, it is immoral. On the basis of this, Kant names four actions that are inherently immoral: suicide, making a lying promise, refusal to develop one’s talents and refusal to do charity.[29]
Moreover, the second formulation of the categorical imperative is founded on the “principle of ends.”[30] Immanuel Kant argues that “that which serves the will as the objective ground of its self-determination is the end, and this, if it is given through mere reason, must be equally valid for all rational beings…what contains merely the ground of the possibility of the action whose effect is the end is called the means.”[31] The end motivates the will to choose a means to attain such an end. For Kant, the human person must always be treated as an end in itself and never as a means to any end.[32] This is what makes the human a person not a thing: that it is an end in itself.[33] Things can be used as means but never persons. Upon this foundation, Kant gives the second formulation of the categorical imperative thus: “Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.[34] Again, Immanuel Kant assesses the four duties mentioned above in the light of the categorical imperative as the principle of ends. The four of them are also judged by this principle to be immoral.[35]
In furtherance, the third formulation of the categorical imperative is based on what is known as the “principle of autonomy.”[36] The content of this principle is that the principle of morality, the categorical imperative commands the moral agent to act is such a way that she is essentially a legislator of the law that she ought to obey – the moral law. This is the essence of her autonomy: that she makes the laws she obeys.[37] If this were not so, then she would be involved in a heteronomy.[38] And what is commanded in a heteronomy is enforced on the basis of either stimulus or coercion and, the will is necessitated and conditioned to act on its own interest or another’s.[39] In heteronomy, there is no morality.
Consequently, Immanuel Kant puts the third formulation of the categorical imperative this way: “Do no action in accordance with any other maxim, except one that could subsist with its being a universal law, and hence only so that the will could through its maxim at the same time consider itself as universally legislative.”[40] According to this principle, the moral agent must consider herself as a member or even the head of a realm of ends.[41] In this world, she must consider herself as making the laws she obeys. It is only in being a legislator of the laws that she obeys that the freedom of her will is guaranteed and it is in the exercise of her freewill that her dignity is actualized.[42] It seems that the dignity of the human person therefore lies in their autonomy and this is realized in the moral life. To be moral is to recognize my own, as well as, the dignity and autonomy of others.[43] Kant asserts further that:
Morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, that is, to the possible universal legislation through its maxims. That action which can subsist with the autonomy of the will is permitted; that which does not agree with it is impermissible. The will whose maxims necessarily harmonize with the laws of autonomy is a holy, absolutely good will. The dependence of a will which is not absolutely good on the principle of autonomy (moral necessitation) is obligation. Thus the latter cannot be referred to a holy being. The objective necessity of an action from obligation is called duty.[44]

Evaluation and Conclusion
            In the main, Immanuel Kant’s deontological stance in ethics, articulated in the categorical imperative, is normative: it states how people ought to behave; not how people do behave.[45] Severally too, Kant’s ethical stance has been described as formalistic.[46] Thus, “Kant bases the moral law upon the need on the part of reason to keep free, even in action, from self-contradiction: to order action so that one can desire the maxim of one's own course to become a universal law.”[47] For the ethical formalist “right is right and wrong is wrong. All particular moral judgments must be tested by appeal to the sovereign norm of inherent universal and eternal right.”[48] Ethical formalism therefore, concerns itself with stating the basic canon of morality without particular reference to any content of such a rule. Seen in this way, Kant simply states what makes an action to be right or wrong – the maxim of action; what makes a person to be moral or immoral – the disposition of the will. Thus, Kant’s ethics, articulated in the categorical imperative proposes a principle of morality that is both unconditional and absolute.[49]
            However, the formalism of ethical formalism, while being its own merit, also constitute its key nemesis. Hence, critics avow that formalistic morality, like Immanuel Kant’s, lack content since they say nothing of what really is to be done or avoided as such.[50] So, the categorical imperative appears empty. In fact, Kant’s condescension to name specifically four actions as immoral in his attempt to apply the categorical imperative, is tagged pretentious by F. A. Henry. Henry notes that:
With this the "Categorical Imperative"-the absolute command of the moral law-descends from its autocratic grandeur to a simple appeal to our instinctive sympathy with our kind and our instinctive desire for the well-being of society, while we for our part turn from the blind worship of that moral fatality to simple Utilitarianism and seeking "the greatest good of the greatest number." Worse than this: in the consideration of the fourth example we are surprised by a Homeric nod. Kant argues that a man cannot will that indifference to the wants and sorrows of mankind should be the universal law, because such a will would contradict itself, for many cases might occur in which he himself would have need of the sympathy and aid of his fellow-men, and of this he would by his own will have deprived himself. Thus all unconsciously the high-souled thinker drops from the transcendental empyrean to the depths of bald self-interest.[51]

Accordingly, Radoslav Tsanoff argues that Immanuel Kant could not consistently hold onto his categorical imperative as the criteria for morality without appeal to the teleological dimension of moral actions. Thus:
These examples which Kant uses, indicate an eventual appeal to consequences…. We recognize the importance of pure dutiful respect for the moral law…. But we can see no way of justifying our moral approval solely by a formal principle, without appeal to consequences, and to specific consequences.[52]

Besides, Tsanoff, making a contrastive study of Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer on the ultimate principle of morality notes that when Kant makes claim to be interested in the laws of what ought to take place instead of the reasons for what takes place in human experience, Schopenhauer simply objects by nothing that Kant lacks justification for stating that that which never does take place ought to take place.[53] In this way, Tsanoff observes that, Schopenhauer, like other critics of Kant, calls into question the apriority of the law of morality. These critics note the difficulty of pure formalism in the derivation of the principle of morality. Tsanoff observes that with Schopenhauer’s attack, Kant’s categorical imperative is but a glorified form of hypothetical imperative, thus:
All oughtness is hypothetical; an 'absolute obligation' is a contradictio in adjecto. If Kant does employ a 'thou shalt' in his ethics, then he must point to the ancestry of his principle and justify its use in his method; but he has no right to assume it at all; far less, to assume it as absolutely necessary and categorically imperative.[54]

Moreover, one wonders whether Immanuel Kant’s insistence on the intrinsic goodness or otherwise of actions would survive the test of the evolutionary theories of morality. Are there acts that are always praiseworthy and some others that are perennially condemnable? Accordingly, Goldwin Smith argues that with the discovery of evolution, paradigms have shifted and are shifting, even in moral philosophy, thus, theories of morality like Kant’s that insist on the inherent rightness and wrongness of certain actions simply disappear especially as there are, over time, evident “variations in the moral code among the different races of mankind.[55] Again, Kant’s insistence on duty and respect for the law stifles spontaneity in moral actions.[56] What do we make of virtuous acts, act done from a habit of goodness? Does virtue ethics not nosedive in the tribunal of Kantian ethical formalism? Or does Kant simply suggest that being a truly virtuous person is an impossibility in this world? Indeed, it seems that this is what Kant thinks.[57]
In spite of all these, Frank Thilly thinks that Immanuel Kant deserves a pat on the back for his “much praised and much abused theory of morality.[58] Thilly finds Kant much consistency in Kant’s theory of morality. He especially notes that morality ought to be disinterested and so the universality of its principle is inevitable.[59] How does Thilly make sense of Kant’s apparent inconsistency in maintaining the apriority of the principle of morality in the Groundwork and the statement in his Critique of Pure Reason that: “Moral concepts are not entirely pure concepts of reason, because they are grounded on something empirical (pleasure or displeasure).[60] Indeed, what sense can the Kantian and the Anti-Kantian make of this? Besides, can morality really be without any incentive for the moral agent?
            In the final analysis, this paper has shown how Immanuel Kant attempts to derive the principle of morality from purely a formalistic point of view. While this is the only route left for Kant, it is the very route by which his critics subvert his method. The present work enunciates an effort to follow Kant through his derivation of the three formulations of the categorical imperative, the imperative of morality, from its basic form expressed in the universalizability criterion. Moreover, after having gone through Kant’s and his critics’ cogitations on the subject matter, one can conclude that Kant does justice to his project: the derivation of the principle of morality from a disinterested standpoint. But his critics point out that it is just especially difficult for morality to be purely disinterested.
Bibliography
Bordum, Anders. The Categorical Imperative: Analyzing Immanuel Kant’s Grounding for a
Metaphysics of Morals. Copenhagen: Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, 2002.

Doring, A. “The Motives to Moral Conduct.” International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 5, No. 3
(April 1895), pp.361-375.

Ebels-Duggan, Kyla. “Kantian Ethics.” In Christian Miller (ed.), The Continuum Companion to
Ethics. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011, pp.168-189.

Ekong, Joseph. “The Notion of Normativity in Kant’s Practical Philosophy: A Contrastive Study
of Christine Korsgaard’s and Paul Guyer’s Perspectives.” Ibadan Dominican Studies, Vol. 1, Issue 2, (January 2016), pp.68-92.

Guyer, Paul. The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy. Edited. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.

 ……………“The Derivation of the Categorical Imperative: Kant’s Correction for a Fatal Flaw.”
The Harvard Review of Philosophy, X, (2002), pp.64-80.

Henry, F. A. “The Futility of the Kantian Doctrine of Ethics.” International Journal of Ethics,
Vol. 10, No. 1 (October 1899), pp.73-89.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited and Translated by Allen
Wood. New York: Yale University Press, 2002.

……………Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.

……………Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and Edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

……………Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 2002.

Pojman, Louis P. and Fieser, James. Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong. 7th Edition. Boston:
Wadsworth, 2012.

Smith, Goldwin. “The Origin of Morality.” The North American Review, Vol. 167, No. 503
(October 1898), pp.418-427.

Thilly, Frank. “The Kantian Ethics and its Critics.” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 27, No. 6
(November 1918), pp.646-650.

Tsanoff, Radosalv A. Ethics. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.
…………………“Schopenhauer’s Criticism of Kant’s Theory of Ethics.” The Philosophical
Review, Vol. 19, No. 5 (September 1910), pp.512-534.


[1] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood (New York: Yale University Press, 2002), p.37.
[2] In fact, Anders Bordum identifies four (4) in his The Categorical Imperative: Analyzing Immanuel Kant’s Grounding for a Metaphysics of Morals, (Copenhagen: Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, 2002), p.8.
[3] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.54.
[4] Hereafter, simply, Groundwork.
[5] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.9.
[6] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, pp.13-15.
[7] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.14.
[8] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.15.
[9] Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th edition, (Boston: Wadsworth, 2012), p.102.
[10] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.16.
[11] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.30.
[12] An imperfect will is one that does not necessarily do what is presented to it as good; it is a will that is free in the sense of not determined.
[13] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.30.
[14] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.31.
[15] Paul Guyer, “The Derivation of the Categorical Imperative: Kant’s Correction for a Fatal Flaw,” The Harvard Review of Philosophy, X, (2002), p.70.
[16] Joseph Ekong, “The Notion of Normativity in Kant’s Practical Philosophy: A Contrastive Study of Christine Korsgaard’s and Paul Guyer’s Perspectives,” Ibadan Dominican Studies, vol. 1, issue 2, (January 2016), p.71. 
[17] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.31.
[18] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.33.
[19] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.36.
[20] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.36.
[21] Latin phrase, meaning “always and everywhere.”
[22] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.37.
[23] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.37.
[24] Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th edition, p.129.
[25] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.54.
[26] Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th edition, p.129.
[27] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.38.
[28] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.38.
[29] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.38ff.
[30] Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th edition, p.129.
[31] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.45.
[32] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.45.
[33] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.46.
[34] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, pp.46-47.
[35] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.47ff.
[36] Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th edition, p.129.
[37] Indeed, the term ‘autonomy’ comes from two Greek words auto, meaning ‘self;’ and nomos, meaning ‘rule.’ Hence, autonomy means ‘self-rule.’
[38] Ruled by another.
[39] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.51.
[40] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.52.
[41] By world of ends Kant means “the systematic combination of various rational beings through communal laws” (Groundwork, p.51).
[42] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Allen Wood, p.52.
[43] Kant makes a distinction between dignity and price. Things and other values are priced, having a relative worth, but the human person, the moral agent has dignity, intrinsic worth (see Groundwork, pp.52-53).
[44] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.57.
[45] Cf. Kyla Ebels-Duggan, “Kantian Ethics” in Christian Miller (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Ethics (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), p.182.
[46] Cf. Radosalv A. Tsanoff, Ethics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947), p.50ff.
[47] A. Doring “The Motives to Moral Conduct,” International Journal of Ethics, vol. 5, no. 3 (April 1895), p.364.
[48] Radosalv A. Tsanoff, Ethics, p.48.
[49] Cf. Radosalv A. Tsanoff, Ethics, p.53.
[50] Cf. Radoslav A. Tsanoff, Ethics, p.57ff.
[51] F. A. Henry, “The Futility of the Kantian Doctrine of Ethics,” International Journal of Ethics, vol. 10, no. 1 (Oct., 1899), p.75.
[52] Radoslav A. Tsanoff, Ethics, pp.60-61.
[53] Cf. Radoslav A. Tsanoff, “Schopenhauer’s Criticism of Kant’s Theory of Ethics,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 19, no. 5 (September 1910), p.515.
[54] Radoslav A. Tsanoff, “Schopenhauer’s Criticism of Kant’s Theory of Ethics,” The Philosophical Review, p.515.
[55] Goldwin Smith, “The Origin of Morality,” The North American Review, vol. 167, no. 503 (October 1898), p.419.
[56] Cf. Radoslav A. Tsanoff, Ethics, p.66.
[57] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.552.
[58] Frank Thilly, “The Kantian Ethics and its Critics,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 27, no. 6 (November 1918), p.646.
[59] Cf. Frank Thilly, “The Kantian Ethics and its Critics,” The Philosophical Review, p.646.
[60] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, p.552.

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