Notes on Kant s Theory of Ethics

Transcription

1 Notes on Ethical Theories Nathan Poage Notes on Kant s Theory of Ethics Kant s theory is based on the analysis of the concept of duty. When we think of the meaning of the term duty we think of some thing which is necessary, something which we are obligated to do whether we like it or not. Given this fact about the meaning of duty, Kant thinks that any adequate theory of duty must not be based on the way the world actual is, or how a certain society is, or on certain peoples preferences; it must be based on reason itself, be entirely a priori and necessary. We will return to this point below. What follows is a brief summary and explication of some of the key points of Kant s finest and most famous work on Ethics: The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant begins Section I of his work with an examination of unconditional value. He states that there is only one thing in the world that has value without qualification and that is a good will. He reviews other possible sources of value and shows how all of them, in spite of how good they may seem initially, are only good with qualification, that is only good under particular circumstances. Talents of mind such as understand or wit are only good when used by a good will. If a master criminal has understand or wit then it can enable him to be even worse. Likewise with qualities of temperament such as perseverance and gifts of fortune such as power, riches and honor. These things are only good when used by a good will; absent a good will they can allow the evil person to be capable of even more evil and harm (4.393). Next, the good will is not good for what it affects or accomplishes. This is so because the consequences of our actions are not entirely under the will s control. One can intend to do something beneficial say lending a friend money and it can actual lead to harm. However, the will is not good because of what it accomplishes but only because of what it wills (4.394). For Kant, a will is good if it acts only from duty. Now Kant distinguishes between acting in accordance with duty and acting from duty. To understand his point we must first of all define a few terms. First we should distinguish, as Kant does, between willing and wishing. One may wish for world peace but not do anything about it to bring it about. However, if one wills world peace (a willing which ultimately may be futile because it is outside of one s power) then one will do what is in one s power to bring it about: writing letters to congress, protesting etc. Next is the idea of a maxim. For Kant a maxim is a rule for action. It is what the will acts according to. Kant gives several examples to explain how the idea of a maxim can shows the difference between acting in accordance with duty and acting from duty.

2 Imagine a shopkeeper called John. His maxim or rule for action is this: when I see that it will be good for business I will keep a fair price, that is I will charge my customers the same price. His action is to keep a fair price; his maxim is to do so when it is good for business. Now for Kant, John s action is in accordance with duty but not from duty so his action doesn t have full moral worth. Only actions done from duty have such full moral worth. Consider another example: Phil is also a store owner and his store happens to be next to a building which is used by a number of undercover police officers. Now, because of his neighbors Phil is never sure when someone coming into his store is an undercover police officer. So Phil formulates the following maxim: when I am afraid of being caught by the undercover police I will keep a fair price. Phil s action is identical to John s in that they both keep a fair price. However, again, Phil s action is only in accordance with duty and not from duty. So his action doesn t have full moral worth. Finally, Juana has a shop as well. Her maxim is it is my duty to keep a fair price so I will keep a fair price. Now Juana s action is from duty and so has full moral worth. Why is this the case? Kant thinks that to have moral worth something must be able to be unconditional. In the case of both John and Phil their actions are not unconditional. John s action is conditional upon whether keeping a fair price is seen as being good for business. Suppose he no longer cares what is good for business; say he wants his business to fail to get a tax write off. Now he no longer needs to keep a fair price. Similarly with Phil, he keeps a fair price merely because he is afraid of the undercover police officers who frequent his shop. Say he meets all these police officers and so he can tell who are undercover officers and who aren t; now he can cheat those who are not undercover officers and only keep a fair price for those who he knows to be officers. Again the performance of the action is not unconditional. These actions are also not unconditional in the sense that they are available to any rational being. Not all rational beings could be motivated to keep a fair prince from the maxim of wanting to do what is good for business or out of fear of the undercover police. However, any rational agent could choose to act from Juana s maxim that one should do one s duty. Another example will perhaps make Kant s point even clearer. To help others is a duty. Cindy helps others because to do so makes her feel good. Now Cindy s maxim, or rule for action, will be something like this: when it makes me feel good I will help others. Is it possible that this action can be done unconditionally? No. For could it motivate someone who doesn t feel happy in helping others? No; they would have no reason to help others. Also, imagine that Cindy becomes depressed. She no longer feels good when she helps others. Yet, imagine that she continues to do so anyway. In this case Kant would say that Cindy is acting from duty and not merely in accordance with duty. Why is this? because she is doing the right thing helping others simply because it is a duty and not merely because it makes her feel good. If helping others were dependent upon whether it made her feel good or not then she would not help others when it no longer made her feel good. Her actions would be conditional then and not unconditional ( ).

3 The next question we should address is how exactly Kant articulates what our duties are. A duty has the form of a command, or, in Kant s parlance, an imperative. There are accordingly two sorts of imperatives for Kant: a hypothetical imperative and a categorical imperative (4:414). A hypothetical imperative has the form of a conditional: for instance, in our previous example of the shop keeper the maxim was phrased as a hypothetical imperative: if I want to do well in my business I will keep a fair price. For a hypothetical imperative if we will the end doing well in business then we necessarily will the means keeping a fair price; if one wills the end but doesn t will the means, we can seriously ask if they in fact really did will or are committed to the end. A categorical imperative, in contrast, is not conditional in nature. Just like our duties, for Kant, are unconditional, if the categorical imperative is a means of articulating our duties then it must also be unconditional. Kant gives several versions of the categorical imperative. Kant says that there is only one categorical imperative but goes on to further explicate this imperative to make it closer to intuition (or our understanding); the categorical imperative is act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law. (4:421). His next version is that we act according to that maxim that we could make a universal law of nature. Kant offers this second version because he thinks that the universality of cause and effect constitute a nature. A way to think of this is that the regularities we find in the world constitute the laws of nature. Kant distinguishes between external nature: say the laws of nature like gravitation etc., and an internal nature, the autonomous subject who gives laws for oneself. To follow the categorical imperative is to follow a rule or maxim that any rational being could also follow regardless of their situation or their inclinations. This, then, makes following the categorical imperative a means of expressing one s human freedom. It is the process of making rules for one self and so is an affirmation of one s autonomy (from Greek autos (self) and nomos (rule)) rather than heteronomy ( Heteros (other), nomos (rule)). Kant thinks that other theories of ethics have been ineffective in instilling morality because they make morality heteronomous: that is, about following a law that someone else lays down (for example being moral because on is afraid of being punished rather than being moral merely because we decide to for its own sake). Kant thinks that a number of different systems of ethics are heteronomous in their orientation; thus ethics which link the performance of duties to happiness or to fear of God are all heteronomous as they are focused on following a law that is external to our will. It is a matter of debate, however, how much this is the case. Kant goes on to give four famous examples that explain the way that the categorical imperative can explain our duties. Kant first of all distinguishes between duties to self and duties to others and perfect and imperfect duties. The duties to self and others should be simple enough to understand; the way he explains perfect and imperfect duties is a bit more involved. There are two ways of accounting for them: one is in terms of how they are generated and the other is in terms of what they mean. I will discuss what they mean first and then return to how exactly they are generated. A perfect duty is one we must always do while an imperfect duty is one

4 we must do at least some of the time. An example of a perfect duty to self is our duty not to commit suicide from a feeling of self- love. He explains this in the following way: suppose one is depressed with the prospects in life and doesn t see the future as at all promising. Such a person might turn to the thought of suicide (think of the example of Hamlet, or a philosophers like Camus who sees the question of suicide to be the basic human question). This person sees their future existence as promising more suffering than enjoyment and so considers cutting their life short. However, according to Kant s reading of the example, the person still has a sense of morality and duty and so inquires whether this act would in fact be in line with duty or whether it rather violates it. This is an important point to note. In order for one to be dutiful one already has to in some sense be a moral person, to be a person for whom moral considerations have weight and count as reasons for acting in particular ways. This point is similar to Plato and Aristotle s account of ethics, which stresses how important a proper upbringing is for acting properly. The morally conscientious person in Kant s example, asks themselves whether committing suicide is in line with their duties. The person then applies the categorical imperative to test if acting in this manner is consistent with duty. Here is what they find. Killing oneself in this situation would be from a motive of self- love; that is, they are trying to avoid future pain by curtailing their life. So the impulse here is to love oneself (avoid pain) by means of destroying oneself (killing oneself); the impulse of self- love then simultaneously bids them to preserve themselves and destroy themselves. This Kant says is self- contradictory: it is impossible that the motive force that preserves one should also destroy one. Kant, in fact, sees this as contradictory and as inconceivable as a law of nature: it is impossible that the law that preserves one s life should simultaneous destroy one s life. Since this maxim could not serve as a universe law of nature it is not in line with duty; we have a perfect duty, then, to always abstain from such actions from such maxims. This is a perfect duty because it is inconceivable that the maxim could be a universal law of nature; conceivability then is our test for whether duties are perfect or imperfect. For an example of an imperfect duty to others Kant mentions our duty to help others. He gives the example of the uncharitable miser. This miser basically operates on the maxim of God helps those who help themselves. The miser is in a comfortable position economical and so doesn t wish to help others who are less fortunate them himself, nor does he want help from anyone else; he prefers a world seemingly were everyone fends for themselves. Now Kant thinks that it is conceivable that such a world exist, a world in which no one helps anyone else; however, he doesn t think that such a world can be consistently willed. Once the miser has willed the universal maxim that all fend for themselves, he has cut himself off from any potential assistance which he may need some day. Thus this maxim is not universally willable and thus violates the categorical imperative (not in conception but will); thus one must helps some others some of the time. If one doesn t help on some particular occasion one has not violated the categorical imperative; but one cannot will consistently that no one ever help anyone else for one never knows when they may need assistance (4: 423).

5 Kant gives another famous formulation of the categorical imperative that he says is consistent with his previous formulation of universal law. This formulation says that one must always treat rational beings, including oneself, never merely as a means but always as an end in themselves (4:428). To make this point clearer, we should distinguish between non- rational beings and rational beings. For Kant non- rational beings, such as animals, are mere things and thus can be used as a means to some other end such as a food or clothing. Kant nevertheless doesn t think we should wantonly abuse animals because to do so shows that we will also likely abuse human beings. Following in the tradition of Descartes, Kant basically sees animals as things. Rational beings, on the other hand, are capable of fixing their own ends, that is making up their mind for themselves and setting their own plans and goals. Because of this fact it is wrong for us to treat other rational beings as mere instruments for our goals because as rational beings they are always capable of making up their minds for themselves. To illustrate this point we should look at the case of manipulation. Say someone complements another person and tells them the sorts of things one thinks they would like to hear in order to get them to do what one wants. Say that one tells another a lie to get them to make a decision in one s favor. Say that a man tells a woman that they will marry them in order to get some favor from them. Now the person has no intention of marrying but they think if they say this they will get what they want. Here is a case where a person is treating another as a mere means: in this case lying to get what they want. If the woman knew that the man in fact is not going to marry her she may have a completely different response. The man, in essence, is bypassing the woman s ability to make decisions for herself: he is just saying what he thinks she wants to hear in order to get what he wants. Now this is a pattern which is not universalizable because simultaneous to treating a rational being as a thing the man is treating himself as a rational being who can make decisions for himself. He is then treating himself as an exception to the rule: allowing for his own rational decision making while preventing another rational being from making up her own mind. The man is thus violating the categorical imperative. To conclude we can touch on a few counterexamples or objections to Kant s moral theory. Hegel had argued that we can get situations which seemingly violate the categorical imperative which are in fact good. His example is the idea of charity: if everyone gave charity to the poor then there would be no poor and thus the process of charity giving (Kant s example of an imperfect duty to others) can t be universalized without undermining itself. However, Kant could respond that the process of charity does not aim at the continuation of giving charity but rather on the alleviation of suffering and the reduction in poverty. Charity can be universally willed in these terms without contradiction so Hegel s objection fails. There are other similar sorts of objections as the one we saw from Hegel. We can ask if universalizability is a sufficient condition for something being moral or if it is just a necessary condition of morality. If it is sufficient, then it means that it is just

6 enough on its own to guarantee the morality of some act. However, objectors point out that universalizability on its own is not enough for morality for I can universalize things that are not moral but are rather morally indifferent. For instance, I can universalize that I put one sock on before another every day; or I take juice before I take coffee with my breakfast. Though these things are universalizable they are morally indifferent. Just the fact that they are universalizable doesn t tell us anything about their morality. Now Kant can respond to this objection in one of two ways. First of all he can say that the test is negative: that is, that it just shows that something is immoral or against duty if it violates universalizability. In this case since the case doesn t violate universalizability it is clear that it is not immoral. Secondly, he can say like Aristotle that to be moral requires a prior interest in morality, a basic upbringing. This upbringing will allow people to have some sort of idea of the difference between cases which are trivial and universalizable and non- trivial and universalizable. This distinction between trivial and non- trivial cases will have to operate prior to our understanding of universalizability. Thus, a person with an adequate upbringing just knows that it is not a matter of tremendous moral import if one drinks juice before coffee or puts on one sock before the other. Another objection can be formulated to show that universalizability is not a necessary condition for duty. Imagine a case like the following: one s maxim is that when one wants to make a good living one will become a doctor. Now, we see if we could universalize this point. If everyone, when they want to make a good living would be come a doctor then it not be the case that all of these people would be able to make a good living because there would be too many doctors. Making a giving living turns out to depend, in part, on supply and demand of people in a given profession. This maxim, then, turns out not to be universalizable so does that mean that it is against duty to become a doctor? Again the answer is no. It would seem to be the case then that universalizability is not a necessary condition for being one s duty. However, Kant could respond as he did above, and in a manner reminiscent to Plato and Aristotle. The person with an adequate moral upbringing could just see in this case that the choice of one s career is not strictly speaking a matter of morality but one of preference and aptitude etc. (we could, however, imagine professions where it is a matter of morality whether one takes them up such as assassins etc.). It seems that the problem evaporates if we make a distinction between morally trivial failures of universalizability and non- trivial failures. Kant s explanation of his cases seems to presuppose some prior moral sense before running the categorical imperative. The person who is contemplating suicide from self- love asks himself whether it is according to duty; thus the person, prior to applying the categorical imperative, already has a premonition as to whether or not the act is morally significant. The categorical imperative, then, is only applied to cases which have been recognized through prior moral reasoning to be moral significant, that is non- trivial from a moral standpoint. Kant s theory is complex and this treatment doesn t pretend to be exhaustive. His theory has remained one of the most important moral theories in the history of

7 philosophy and continues to inspire philosophers with its focus on rationality and the necessary requirements of duty.