Reviewing Kant's Foundations ...

Rommel as 'good guy', July 13, 1942

Our lively discussion yesterday raised a number of issues where Kant's theory might be open to criticism.


1) One basic criticism is Kant's departure point - the notion of an entirely GOOD WILL. He says: Mental talents such as intelligence, wit, and judgement, and temperaments such as courage, resoluteness, and perseverance are doubtless in many ways good and desirable; but they can become extremely bad and harmful if the person’s character isn’t good—i.e. if the will that is to make use of these gifts of nature isn’t good. 


This is a bit like saying that anything can be misused, even a person's best and most admirable qualities. We might admire Field Marshal Rommel but think that he had the misfortune to be fighting in support of a rotten regime. His good qualitieswere subverted by the the regime's bad purposes. The basic criticism that might be relevant here is the simple one - How does one go from Average Joe to Holy Joe, from someone caught up in the toils of our human condition to being someone of exceptionally good character, someone with a  perfect disposition? If we don't know how we might change ourselves, there would seem to be little point in studying moral philosophy. Or does Kant believe that merely be becoming aware of this logic we might move ourselves towards being people of tougher and better character? Perhaps he does, but it seems unlikely that a few intellectual lights would make people better people. It doesn't seem to do a lot for Oxford dons, though no doubt they do make better dinner companions. 


A related criticism has already been made, at least implicitly. A person might have a GOOD WILL in Kant's sense, but be duped by a bad government or a rotten society. Kant does seem to allow for this possibility. His third test for the Categorical Imperative - the 'Kingdom of Ends' - points us towards a society of entirely rational persons, who would all agree about the sorts of things people should do and on the laws needed to regulate society, but once again this is a picture of an impossible perfection. Kant uses his rational model as an effective talisman against the corruption of the world. We may wonder if his faith is well-placed.


Kant leaves us with the problem of how to transform ourselves. He tells us what we would be like and how we would act if we were perfect, but not how we might make ourselves perfect. 


2) Kant's hypothetical imperative gives us a logical model of our ordinary everyday actions and decisions. We do things in order to achieve our desired ends. I make an effort to impress my new colleagues with my wit, charm and general friendliness, but perhaps I do so in order to be well-received by them as a first step towards establishing myself within the company. And people understand that - they are probably behaving in the same way towards me in an elaborate ritual display of good will - but this is good will in minuscule, not majuscule. These are not moral actions as Kant conceives them. 

All the ordinary business of our lives seems for Kant to fall outside the arena of actions that may properly in his view be called moral. They may be rational in a limited instrumental sense, but they do not deserve the ultimate accolade of 'moral' because they are not performed for entirely disinterested reasons. They do not spring from the perceptions and deliberations of the Categorical Imperative. The hypothetical imperative seems intended to model all those ordinary actions that make up the fabric of our lives. We have to say that this seems an extremely simplified version of the immense compexity of avaerage days with all their shortfalls, avoidances, deceptions and self-deceptions. Let me for the fun of it quote a poem by Philip Larkin: 

                            Talking in bed ought to be easiest,

                Lying together there goes back so far,
                An emblem of two people being honest.

                Yet more and more time passes silently.
                Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest
                Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

                And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
                None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
                At this unique distance from isolation

                It becomes still more difficult to find
                Words at once true and kind,
                Or not untrue and not unkind.

Honesty is not something simple or easy. It is not something that can be put through a series of simple test-steps. No aspect of our lives has this clear simple quality. We cannot press the 'reset' button and put things back the way they were on some paradisal first day, not in our individual lives nor in our international lives - as America's recent attempted 'RESET' diplomacy with Russia demonstrated.

3) The complexity of our moral lives vanishes almost completely in Kant's account. It is as though Kant had reduced that complexity to a rational scaffold, but we have to live 'where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.' (Yeats) We still do not know where to find the ladder to climb up and out of our ordinary lives. 

St Paul

Kant's may be a simple rational picture, but it is one that owes a lot to traditional Christian theology. St Paul's distinction between the general condition of our lives - our condition humaine - contrasts with that higher transformed life of those who have accepted the Christian revelation as to how one ought to live as exemplified in the life and death of Jesus. This distinction is expressed by Paul as that between lives that are lived 'according to the flesh' - kata sarka - and a life that is lived 'in or in accordance to the spirit', kata pneuma. The term 'sarx' or ‘flesh’ translates Hebrew ‘basar’ and should not be taken literally – though that is what all too many people have done and continue to do – but is intended rather as a term to denote a a sphere or character of existence, one dominated by an attachment to transient, ultimately less worthwhile things. ‘Kata sarka denotes simply a life lived at the level of decaying materiality, where the satisfaction of human appetite and desire is the highest objective’ (James Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 2006, pp 67-8). In contrast, a life lived kata pneuma is one that discerns and attempts to follow those values that religious belief sees as revealed in the nature of the world – values that are God-ordained and intrinsic to the world and not chosen from a values-catalogue along with clothes and holidays. Kant's picture is very different in terms of its vocabulary but it retains the fundamental theological distinction between our ordinary lives, desires and actions and that more elevated perspective on life which Kant claims is discernible through reason alone. It is noticeable that Kant seems to think that everyone should inevitably, logically, agree with each other. This seems very close to being a secular version of revelation. In both values are somehow discovered, not chosen.

Some good guys from seventh century Coptic Egypt

3) Most people when they talk about Kant focus on the concept of the categorical imperative and particularly on its second formulation as the Maxim of Humanity. 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. The three formulations of the categorical Imperative are said to be equivalent to one another, but this one does seem to be different from the other two. Unlike the other two, this one meshes with the world and gives us unmistakable guidance about how to comport ourselves vis à vis others. We should treat them always with respect, with a sense of their irreducible valuable in and for themselves. We should never see them as purely there as instruments or means for our own satisfactions. In practice of course we do treat people as useful instruments for our purposes. The waiter brings our café and croissant and our mother for so many years washes and irons and cooks meals for her unappreciative children, but, as we become a little more mature and perceptive, we learn to be always aware that the waiter is also a person in his own right and not merely a human automaton at our service and, growing older and with a little more more understanding, we come closer to appreciating our mother's unceasing love.

This second formula is very reminiscent of the New Testament's injunction to 'love your neighbour as yourself'. It is this formula more than anything else that gives Kant's moral philosophy its content, though without the religious context. What is not so clear is how Kant is able to claim that this content-rich second formula is equivalent to the other two, the Formula of Universal Law and the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends. Is respect for others the only maxim that can be universalized and the only maxim that can be the basis for a rational community? More particularly, does the humanity formula give us a complete guide for how we should act in the world? Let us take an example. In the New Testament Jesus is recorded as saying that we should not confront our enemies or return violence with violence. Can we universalize this as a maxim for our lives? Some might claim that it passes the tests but others might object that it conflicts with the second maxim which surely forbids all kinds of killing of others of one's kind. If we do believe that both approaches forbid killing, should we then not actively legislate for the outlawing of all violence, and perhaps, logically, we would then be forced to go further and forbid the killing of any animals or other living creatures, for surely this could be made into a universal maxim too? But would reason be a sufficiently strong motive for people to risk and sacrifice their lives in this way and to forego the slaughter of animals and the eating of meat? It seems that logic would not be a strong enough motive-force. For that one would need religious convictions of some sort.

W.H.Auden regretted advocating 'the necessary murder'

Making Categorical Imperatives work ...

The rational man undaunted by death

Kant proposes three test or varieties for the Categorical Imperative. They are as follows:

(1) The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature

Kant's first formulation states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” This is generally taken to be a decision procedure. First, formulate a maxim that embodies your reason for acting in the way you propose. Then, secondly and crucially, reformulate your maxim as a general law that all rational beings would follow if they were to act as you are proposing. The third stage is to examine the resulting general formulation to see if it represents a plausible or logically consistent law. If it is logically consistent, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If the answer is 'Yes', then your action is morally permissible. 

Let's say you are an investment banker with Sacks-Of-Gold-Man Banking Corporation. You are proposing to issue a bond for a corporate client knowing that the client is bound to lose on the deal. You are proposing a course of action that depends for its success on deception, but it can only be put into operation in a situation where a basic trust exists between the bank and its clients. It is therefore not something that that could be consistently willed in the world because this action would contribute towards the undermining of all trust and without business and human life would arguably become impossible.

(2) The Humanity Formula

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. This is often seen as introducing the idea of “respect” for persons, for whatever it is that is essential to our Humanity. Kant was clearly right that this and the other formulations bring the Categorical Imperative ‘closer to intuition’ than the Universal Law formula. Intuitively, there seems something wrong with treating human beings as mere instruments with no value beyond this. 

Kant formulates respect as a matter of valuing the individual or group of individuals as having an irreducible value in themselves. We see - or should see - them as somehow sacrosanct in themselves. We see them as being as real as ourselves and not therefore as instruments to be regarded as useful for advancing our interests or satisfaction. This would immediately rule out careerist attitudes where the ambitious young person sees others as useful 'contacts', a metaphor that suggests that others are part of an electrical circuit that will make bells ring in our lives. But what about our attitude to waiters or mothers or dustmen? We see them as people who will do some useful service in out lives. We do not see them as individuals in and for themselves. That is just not possible. How are we to turn this square into a circle? We might also notice that this maxim is strikingly reminiscent of the New Testament maxim Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Is there any difference between the two?

(3) The Kingdom of Ends Formula

Many people today see this formula as the one that introduces a social dimension to Kantian morality. For Kant every rational person sees himself or herself as enacting laws that would be binding on every other rational person. This what we have seen already. he also asserts that the rational laws that such a community of rational persons would construct will constitute a community sharing a "Kingdom of Ends".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.

This formulation of the Categorical Imperative combines the others in that (i) it requires that we conform our actions to the maxims of a legislator of laws (ii) that this lawgiver lays down universal laws, binding all rational wills including our own, and (iii) that those laws are of ‘a merely possible kingdom’ each of whose members equally possesses this status as legislator of universal laws, and hence must be treated always as an end in itself.

This puts before our eyes a picture of a rational society of Socratic types, each properly well-disposed and supremely rational. We can imagine this Kingdom of Ends as a painting by Jacques-Louis David - the man who painted the Death of Socrates - but I personally would find this impossible except as an exercise in imagination. Kant sees these three formulas as merely aspects of each other. They are for him a unity, but if that is the case we may reasonably ask ourselves if this is human life as we know it? Surely the big point about human life is that we are not able to act purely rationally. We constantly find ourselves not acting in ways that we approve or failing to do the things that we think we ought to do. Putting it in the terms of St Paul's theology, we live kata sarka - according to the flesh - in ways that seem set against our better aspirations. We might also ask ourselves how Kant's imagined society of perfectly rational agents treat those of us who are a little less than rational and not always exemplars of a good or holy will? is there not a danger that the rational majority would see fit to amend us or even get rid of us according to some rational plan. We might think of the way Germans and Americans shouldn't in the first half of the twentieth century to 'edit out' these deficient persons in the population, the mentally deficient and the just plain stupid. The Americans went for sterilization, the Germans for sterilization and also more directly killed many mentally deficient people by lethal injection. This frightful period might lead us also to ask a further question - how can Kant's rational people be certain that they are not deceiving themselves? They might believe that they are motivated only by rational good will and that their maxims are universalizable and a proper part in a rational society based on Kantian laws, but could they not perhaps be just kidding themselves?

Something of the spirit of what has been called the Age of Rationalism can be seen in the earlier paintings Jacques-Louis David. His uncompromising subordination of colour to drawing and his economy of statement were in keeping with the new severity of taste. His themes gave expression to the new cult of the civic virtues of stoical self-sacrifice, devotion to duty, honesty, and austerity. Brutus might accept the death of his sons as the price for duty and loyalty to the Republic but this kind of rationalistic devotion might ultimately become the something similar to the vision of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov or the real nightmare of the Third Reich.

Note: Written in even more haste than usual. The summaries of the three versions of the categorical imperative are based on the entry for Kant's Moral Philosophy in the online Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy. The opinions and examples, however, are mine.

There is only one categorical imperative...

There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative.  It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.


Now if all imperatives of duty can be derived from this one mperative as a principle, we can at least show what we understand by the concept of duty and what it means, even 
though it remain undecided whether that which is called duty is 
an empty concept or not.


The universality of law according to which effects are produced constitutes what is properly called nature in the most general sense (as to form), i.e., the existence of things so far as it is determined by universal laws. [By analogy], then, the universal imperative of duty can be expressed as follows: Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature.

Would robots have any difficulty with categorical imperatives?

We shall now enumerate some duties, adopting the usual division of them into duties to 
ourselves and to others and into perfect and imperfect duties.


1. A man who is reduced to despair by a series of evils feels a weariness with life but is still in possession of his reason sufficiently to ask whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life.  Now he asks whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature.  His maxim, however, is: For love of myself, I make it my principle to shorten my life when by a longer duration it threatens more evil than satisfaction. But it is questionable whether this principle of self-love could become a universal law of nature.  One immediately sees a contradiction in a system of nature whose law would be to destroy life by the feeling whose special office is to impel the improvement of life.  In this case it would not exist as nature; hence that maxim cannot obtain as a law of nature, and thus it wholly contradicts the supreme principle of all duty.


2. Another man finds himself forced by need to borrow money.  He well knows that he will not be able to repay it, but he also sees that nothing will be loaned him if he does not firmly promise to repay it at a certain time.  He desires to make such a promise, but he has enough conscience to ask himself whether it is not improper and opposed to dutty to relieve his distress in such a way.  Now, assuming he does decide to do so, the maxim of his action would be as follows: When I believe myself to be in need of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know I shall never do so. Now this principle of self-love or of his own benefit may very well be compatible with his whole future welfare, but the question is whether it is right. He changes the pretension of self-love into a universal law and then puts the question: How would it be if my maxim became a universal law? He immediately sees that it could never hold as a universal law of nature and be consistent with itself; rather it must necessarily contradict itself.  For the universality of a law which says that anyone who believes himself to be in need could promise what he pleased with the intention of not fulfilling it would 
make the promise itself and the end to be accomplished by it impossible; no one would believe what was promised to him but would only laugh at any such assertion as vain pretense.


3. A third finds in himself a talent which could, by means of some cultivation, make him in many respects a useful man.  But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers indulgence in pleasure to troubling himself with broadening and improving his fortunate natural gifts.  Now, however, let him ask whether his maxim of neglecting his gifts, besides agreeing with his propensity to idle amusement, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees that a system of nature could indeed exist in accordance with such a law, even though man (like the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands) should let his talents rust and resolve to devote his life to idleness, indulgence, and propagation—in a word, to pleasure.  But he cannot possibly will that this should become a universal law of nature or that it should be implanted in us by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that all his faculties should be developed, inasmuch as they are given to him for all sorts of possible purposes.


4. A fourth man, for whom things are going well, sees that others (whom he could help) have to struggle with great hardships, and he asks, “What concern of mine is it? Let each one be as happy as heaven wills, or as he can make himself; I will not take anything from him or even envy him; but to his welfare or to his assistance in time of need I have no desire to contribute.” If such a way of thinking were a universal law of nature, certainly the human race could exist, and without doubt even better than in a state where everyone talks of sympathy and good will or even exerts himself occasionally to practice them while, on the other hand, he cheats when he can and betrays or otherwise violates the rights of man.  Now although it is possible that a universal law of nature according to that maxim could exist, it is nevertheless impossible to will that such a principle should hold everywhere as a law of nature.  For a will which resolved this would conflict with itself, since instances can often arise in which he would need the love and sympathy of others, and in which he would have robbed himself, by such a law of nature springing from his own will, of all hope of the aid he desires.


The foregoing are a few of the many actual duties, or at least of duties we hold to be actual, whose derivation from the one stated principle is clear. We must be able to will that a maxim of our action become a universal law; this is the canon of the moral estimation of our action generally.  Some actions are of such a nature that their maxim cannot even be thought as a universal law of nature without contradiction, far from it being possible that one could will that it should be such. In others this internal impossibility is not found, though it is still impossible to will that their maxim should be raised to the universality of a law of nature, because such a will would contradict itself. We easily see that the former maxim conflicts with the stricter or narrower (imprescriptible) duty, the latter with broader (meritorious) duty.  Thus all duties, so 
far as the kind of obligation (not the object of their action) is concerned, have been completely exhibited by these examples in their dependence on the one principle.

The uncertainty of happiness

Othello and Desdemona's first meeting

If it were only equally easy to give a definite conception of happiness, the imperatives of prudence would correspond exactly with those of skill, and would likewise be analytical. For in this case as in that, it could be said: "Whoever wills the end, wills also (according to the dictate of reason necessarily) the indispensable means thereto which are in his power." But, unfortunately, the notion of happiness is so indefinite that although every man wishes to attain it, yet he never can say definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes and wills. The reason of this is that all the elements which belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, i.e., they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances. Now it is impossible that the most clear-sighted and at the same time most powerful being (supposed finite) should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this. Does he will riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not thereby draw upon his shoulders? Does he will knowledge and discernment, perhaps it might prove to be only an eye so much the sharper to show him so much the more fearfully the evils that are now concealed from him, and that cannot be avoided, or to impose more wants on his desires, which already give him concern enough. Would he have long life? who guarantees to him that it would not be a long misery? would he at least have health? how often has uneasiness of the body restrained from excesses into which perfect health would have allowed one to fall? and so on. In short, he is unable, on any principle, to determine with certainty what would make him truly happy; because to do so he would need to be omniscient. We cannot therefore act on any definite principles to secure happiness, but only on empirical counsels, e.g. of regimen, frugality, courtesy, reserve, etc., which experience teaches do, on the average, most promote well-being. Hence it follows that the imperatives of prudence do not, strictly speaking, command at all, that is, they cannot present actions objectively as practically necessary; that they are rather to be regarded as counsels (consilia) than precepts precepts of reason, that the problem to determine certainly and universally what action would promote the happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble, and consequently no imperative respecting it is possible which should, in the strict sense, command to do what makes happy; because happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless. This imperative of prudence would however be an analytical proposition if we assume that the means to happiness could be certainly assigned; for it is distinguished from the imperative of skill only by this, that in the latter the end is merely possible, in the former it is given; as however both only ordain the means to that which we suppose to be willed as an end, it follows that the imperative which ordains the willing of the means to him who wills the end is in both cases analytical. Thus there is no difficulty in regard to the possibility of an imperative of this kind either.

Hypothetical and categorical imperatives

Now all imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. The former represent the practical necessity of a possible action as means to something else that is willed (or at least which one might possibly will). The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i.e., as objectively necessary.

Since every practical law represents a possible action as good and, on this account, for a subject who is practically determinable by reason, necessary, all imperatives are formulae determining an action which is necessary according to the principle of a will good in some respects. If now the action is good only as a means to something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is conceived as good in itself and consequently as being necessarily the principle of a will which of itself conforms to reason, then it is categorical.

Thus the imperative declares what action possible by me would be good and presents the practical rule in relation to a will which does not forthwith perform an action simply because it is good, whether because the subject does not always know that it is good, or because, even if it know this, yet its maxims might be opposed to the objective principles of practical reason.

Accordingly the hypothetical imperative only says that the action is good for some purpose, possible or actual. In the first case it is a problematical, in the second an assertorial practical principle. The categorical imperative which declares an action to be objectively necessary in itself without reference to any purpose, i.e., without any other end, is valid as an apodeictic (practical) principle.

Whatever is possible only by the power of some rational being may also be conceived as a possible purpose of some will; and therefore the principles of action as regards the means necessary to attain some possible purpose are in fact infinitely numerous. All sciences have a practical part, consisting of problems expressing that some end is possible for us and of imperatives directing how it may be attained. These may, therefore, be called in general imperatives of skill. Here there is no question whether the end is rational and good, but only what one must do in order to attain it. The precepts for the physician to make his patient thoroughly healthy, and for a poisoner to ensure certain death, are of equal value in this respect, that each serves to effect its purpose perfectly. Since in early youth it cannot be known what ends are likely to occur to us in the course of life, parents seek to have their children taught a great many things, and provide for their skill in the use of means for all sorts of arbitrary ends, of none of which can they determine whether it may not perhaps hereafter be an object to their pupil, but which it is at all events possible that he might aim at; and this anxiety is so great that they commonly neglect to form and correct their judgement on the value of the things which may be chosen as ends.

There is one end, however, which may be assumed to be actually such to all rational beings (so far as imperatives apply to them, viz., as dependent beings), and, therefore, one purpose which they not merely may have, but which we may with certainty assume that they all actually have by a natural necessity, and this is happiness. The hypothetical imperative which expresses the practical necessity of an action as means to the advancement of happiness is assertorial. We are not to present it as necessary for an uncertain and merely possible purpose, but for a purpose which we may presuppose with certainty and a priori in every man, because it belongs to his being. Now skill in the choice of means to his own greatest well-being may be called prudence, * in the narrowest sense. And thus the imperative which refers to the choice of means to one's own happiness, i.e., the precept of prudence, is still always hypothetical; the action is not commanded absolutely, but only as means to another purpose.

Finally, there is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it. This imperative is categorical. It concerns not the matter of the action, or its intended result, but its form and the principle of which it is itself a result; and what is essentially good in it consists in the mental disposition, let the consequence be what it may. This imperative may be called that of morality.

Othello felt he had to kill Desdemona - a categorical imperative?

There is a marked distinction also between the volitions on these three sorts of principles in the dissimilarity of the obligation of the will. In order to mark this difference more clearly, I think they would be most suitably named in their order if we said they are either rules of skill, or counsels of prudence, or commands (laws) of morality. For it is law only that involves the conception of an unconditional and objective necessity, which is consequently universally valid; and commands are laws which must be obeyed, that is, must be followed, even in opposition to inclination. Counsels, indeed, involve necessity, but one which can only hold under a contingent subjective condition, viz., they depend on whether this or that man reckons this or that as part of his happiness; the categorical imperative, on the contrary, is not limited by any condition, and as being absolutely, although practically, necessary, may be quite properly called a command. We might also call the first kind of imperatives technical (belonging to art), the second pragmatic (to welfare), the third moral (belonging to free conduct generally, that is, to morals).

For the quick version for those who don't have time for all this reading, check out this link which tells you about Kant in 'Three Minute Philosophy'. At least it's a bit of fun in a heavy philosophical world! http://wn.com/IMMANUEL_KANT_ON_MORALITY#

Duty alone should guide our actions...

Did Julian Assange act solely out of duty?

To secure one's own happiness is a duty, at least indirectly; for discontent with one's condition, under a pressure of many anxieties and amidst unsatisfied wants, might easily become a great temptation to transgression of duty. But here again, without looking to duty, all men have already the strongest and most intimate inclination to happiness, because it is just in this idea that all inclinations are combined in one total. But the precept of happiness is often of such a sort that it greatly interferes with some inclinations, and yet a man cannot form any definite and certain conception of the sum of satisfaction of all of them which is called happiness. It is not then to be wondered at that a single inclination, definite both as to what it promises and as to the time within which it can be gratified, is often able to overcome such a fluctuating idea, and that a gouty patient, for instance, can choose to enjoy what he likes, and to suffer what he may, since, according to his calculation, on this occasion at least, be has not sacrificed the enjoyment of the present moment to a possibly mistaken expectation of a happiness which is supposed to be found in health. 

Bill and Monica

But even in this case, if the general desire for happiness did not influence his will, and supposing that in his particular case health was not a necessary element in this calculation, there yet remains in this, as in all other cases, this law, namely, that he should promote his happiness not from inclination but from duty, and by this would his conduct first acquire true moral worth. It is in this manner, undoubtedly, that we are to understand those passages of Scripture also in which we are commanded to love our neighbour, even our enemy. For love, as an affection, cannot be commanded, but beneficence for duty's sake may; even though we are not impelled to it by any inclination- nay, are even repelled by a natural and unconquerable aversion. This is practical love and not pathological- a love which is seated in the will, and not in the propensions of sense- in principles of action and not of tender sympathy; and it is this love alone which can be commanded. 

[Thus the first proposition of morality is that to have genuine moral worth, an action must be done from duty]. The second proposition is: That an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire. It is clear from what precedes that the purposes which we may have in view in our actions, or their effects regarded as ends and springs of the will, cannot give to actions any unconditional or moral worth. In what, then, can their worth lie, if it is not to consist in the will and in reference to its expected effect? It cannot lie anywhere but in the principle of the will without regard to the ends which can be attained by the action. For the will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori spring, which is material, as between two roads, and as it must be determined by something, it that it must be determined by the formal principle of volition when an action is done from duty, in which case every material principle has been withdrawn from it.

The third proposition, which is a consequence of the two preceding, I would express thus Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law. I may have inclination for an object as the effect of my proposed action, but I cannot have respect for it, just for this reason, that it is an effect and not an energy of will. Similarly I cannot have respect for inclination, whether my own or another's; I can at most, if my own, approve it; if another's, sometimes even love it; i. e., look on it as favourable to my own interest. It is only what is connected with my will as a principle, by no means as an effect- what does not subserve my inclination, but overpowers it, or at least in case of choice excludes it from its calculation- in other words, simply the law of itself, which can be an object of respect, and hence a command. Now an action done from duty must wholly exclude the influence of inclination and with it every object of the will, so that nothing remains which can determine the will except objectively the law, and subjectively pure respect for this practical law, and consequently the maxim* that I should follow this law even to the thwarting of all my inclinations.

The 'Good Will'

Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804

Nothing in the world—or out of it!—can possibly be conceived that could be called ‘good’ without qualification except a GOOD WILL. Mental talents such as intelligence, wit, and judgment, and temperaments such as courage, resoluteness, and perseverance are doubtless in many ways good and desirable; but they can become extremely bad and harmful if the person’s character isn’t good—i.e. if the will that is to make use of these gifts of nature isn’t good. Similarly with gifts of fortune. Power, riches, honour, even health, and the over-all well-being and contentment with one’s condition that we call ‘happiness’, create pride, often leading to arrogance, if there isn’t a good will to correct their influence on the mind. . . . Not to mention the fact that the sight of someone who shows no sign of a pure and good will and yet enjoys uninterrupted prosperity will never give pleasure to an impartial rational observer. So it seems that without a good will one can’t even be worthy of being happy.

Comment and Questions:

What are we to make of this opening assertion - the only thing that can properly be called 'good' is a 'good will'? He appears to be drawing attention to something fundamental about a person - the necessity for a permanent disposition that underlies and controls our impulses or emotional urges or promptings or the employments of our native talents and abilities. You may have a talent for entertaining people or a winning way with words or a winsomeness that knocks them dead or fantastic abilities for making money that makes you top-of-the-pops at Goldman Sachs (Sacks of gold, man!), but these talents will seem less attractive or desirable if they are part of a personality that lacks a sense of an underlying commitment to what Kant expresses with the notion of enduring 'Good Will'. Without that you might be a funny or witty or sexy or successful person, but your abilities might be employed in a life that is perhaps anything but 'good'. There must be an underlying, a basic or fundamental commitment to 'the good'. Viewed in this light we might see Kant's notion of 'Good Will' not as something static but as an ongoing process that unifies personality and creates what we call character.

Expressions of 'Good Will'?

It is clear that everyone, even the most ill-omened and ill-intentioned of people likes to maintain that they are full of good will, though that they be expressed as good will towards their own people. Dictators always seem to love children and dogs while planning mass arrests or an invasion. it seems human beings feel an impulse to pretend to be full of good will and may actually believe that we are. Perhaps they do feel this kind of benevolence. They just fail to bring it into their lives.


We might look at things a slightly different way. Imagine a person who always responds to things as the impulse of the moment prompts him. In the dark, he jumps when someone touches him. He sees an ice cream or a woman - or a man, I suppose - and must have one or two. He has assets worth millions but wants more. You can think of more examples yourselves I'm sure. The thing is that there is nothing to unify this person's life other than the succession of emotional prompts and desires, and that is no unity at all. Yet often people discover that they can give their lives a sense of direction and purpose by following some  sort of ideology - fascism, communism, militarism, material success or Don Juanism. His life has a kind of spurious unity, but somehow not a unity that we would think worthy of honour or respect. A kind of desperation seems to overcome people of this kind, at least sometimes - and they seem to be driven to continue acquiring more money, sexual conquests, power or success. Their successes seem to be hollow even to themselves, like breaking into an empty room. It is strange that we on the more modest side of this fence seem to be fascinated by stories of such overmastering passions. This may not be what Kant says, but something of the kind may be not too far an inference.


Kant's final claim, made almost incidentally, is that without a good will one cannot hope even be worthy of being happy. In what sense does being a person of good will make us worthy of being happy? He seems to mean that this is the condition without which a person cannot be happy, but what kind of happiness is this? It must, I think, be a happiness that is built upon a life in right relationship to others and the world. If this is true, then happiness for Kant is not any variety of utilitarian satisfaction.

... and in the original German

Kant's Preface


Read carefully this extract from the Preface (page 5 in Beck's edition)

Since my purpose here is directed to moral philosophy, I narrow the question I am asking down to this: Isn’t it utterly necessary to construct a pure moral philosophy that is completely freed from everything that may be only empirical and thus belong to anthropology? That there must be such a philosophy is self-evident from the common idea of duty and moral laws. Everyone must admit that if a law is to hold morally (i.e. as a basis for someone’s being obliged to do something), it must imply absolute necessity; that the command: You are not to lie doesn’t apply only to human beings, as though it had no force for other rational beings (and similarly with all other moral laws properly so called); that the basis for obligation here mustn’t be looked for in people’s natures or their circumstances, but must be found a priori solely in the concepts of pure reason; and that any precept resting on principles of mere experience may be called a practical rule but never a moral law. This last point holds even if there is something universal about the precept in question, and even if its empirical content is very small (perhaps bringing in only the motive involved). Thus not only are moral laws together with their principles essentially different from all practical knowledge involving anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests solely on its pure or non-empirical part. Its application to human beings doesn’t depend on knowledge of any facts about them (anthropology); it gives them, as rational beings, a priori laws—ones that are valid whatever the empirical circumstances may be (Admittedly experience comes into the story in a certain way, because these laws require a power of judgement that has been sharpened by experience— partly in order to pick out the cases where the laws apply and partly to let the laws get into the person’s will and to stress that they are to be acted on. For a human being has so many preferences working on him that, though he is quite capable of having the idea of a practical pure reason, he can’t so easily bring it to bear on the details of how he lives his life.)

Comment and Questions to think about:

(1) Look at the two sentences that I have highlighted in bold above. These seem to contain Kant's essential position, the assumption on which he proceeds to build his moral philosophy. Kant points to the fact that we all share notions of duty and moral law, that's to say, we all share notions that there are some things that we ought to do without qualification, so what he is saying comes to this - Because there exist in the range of all our utterances some assertions which have a distinct logical character as unqualified commands which tell what our duty or responsibilities are, that therefore we should be able to abstract from this set of utterances a set of imperatives that will count as moral, but to count as moral they must not have any mixture with the empirical world. The cartoon opposite explains Kant's position better than my words. If you are fixing her tyre because you hope to gain her favours or if you are doing it because you are feeling sorry for her, then your actions are still mired in the real world. They don't count as moral. Your action is moral if and only if you are doing this because you recognize that you ought to help your neighbour. There's nothing in it for you - and if you think you are doing it out of duty but have in the back of your mind some advantage you hope to gain from this action - say, being counted by the lady and others as a kind and generaous person, then you have once again failed to act in a purely moral manner. 


(2) When Kant says that all moral philosophy rests solely on its pure or non-empirical part, what he seems to mean is that you should be a person of a certain sort - someone who acts without any wish to gain personal advantage of any kind from what he or she does. The man in the cartoon may be seen as the same man on three different occasions. His action on each occasion may from an external behavioural point of view be exactly the same, but the thoughts going through his head - whatever it is that prompts him to this action - is on each occasion different. Only on the third imagined occasion is he acting in Kant's view as a genuinely moral agent, yet, to my mind, there is something strange about Kant thinking of this third situation as one of acting out of a sense of duty. If I do something like this for my neighbour, I may well be doing it purely out a sense of being well-disposed to wards her or I might be doing this because I am applying a rule about helping people in difficulties. Kant seems to suggest that these two are instances of the same kind of action, but are they? He does have a way out of this problem as we shall see when we come to his notion of a 'good will'. This is for him the real basis of moral action. We must have the right kind of disposition.


(3) Having the right kind of disposition in everything we do would seem to be strikingly similar to having a religious attitude or stance towards the world. Is it perhaps true that what Kant is doing is to take our generally accepted Christian notions of what we should and should not do and then trying to reduce them to a particular psychological attitude to the world - good will - and then equipping us with a set of logical tests to see if what we do is really an example of selfless good-will or if it is secretly motivated by some desire for personal advantage. Kant's tests start to look like a secular version of pietistic self-examination, but they are not necessarily any the worse for that or are they?

Does good will have to be universal to count as good will?

Kant's 'Metaphysics of Morals', 1785

What could be more intimidating than the title Kant gives to his famous essay? In English it reads, Foundations of the metaphysics of Morals and in the original German version it was Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, published in 1785 in the distant provincial city of Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia, a region from which the inhabitants fled in 1945 when the Russian armies poured over the border in the closing stages of the Second World War. Today the German province that was once East Prussia is divided between Lithuania, Poland and the Russian military enclave of Kaliningrad, which is the victors' name for what was once Königsberg. (The name derives from that of a Communist politician in Stalin's inner circle).There are no Germans left in what was once Kant's homeland, the result of a policy of Realpolitik and retribution that was biblical in character and which we - the western allies - agreed should be allowed to happen.  I wonder if we should feel the same if triumphant Mexicans decided to expel the people of California or Nevada? They would have arguably more justification than Stalin's armies had for their policy of driving out an entire population. But are there any moral principles that we might stop an army of tanks or dissolve the phalanxes of missile power? 

duc de la Rochefoucauld

We often quote the adage that 'Might makes Right', meaning that power alone gives human actions their sense moral rightness and legal entitlement. We usually say this in a slightly wistful manner to acknowledge the wicked ways of the world, as though we really believed that there are or should be moral standards - moral laws - which all people - triumphant armies, great powers and their governments good and bad - should all adhere to in their dealings with each other and with their own and other peoples and individuals. At the end of the Second World War there was an attempt to revive the idealism of the League of Nations which gave us the principles enshrined in the new United Nations Organisation. It was inevitably perhaps a compromise between the imperatives of power and the rhetoric of moral principle. But we should not reject it on that ground for people and states are often shamed by being forced to live up to the standards they pretend to but in practice flout. As La Rochefoucauld said, 'L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.' We judge ourselves by our pretensions and others by their actions. 

So what are these 'moral laws', these principles that we think should be binding on all people, especially on those who have the power to do harm? Do they exist or are they nothing better than legal fictions? Are they no more than forms of words that lawyers concoct to regulate the actions of individuals and states?  This is the problem that kat sought to solve. He wanted to find a secure basis for moral laws  that would make plain what principles we should follow. If there really are such things as 'moral laws' then we have reached a kind of moral bedrock. Kant believed that he was able to identify these moral laws, which he saw as a fundamental principle of that defined what we ought to do or what should govern all our actions. This was the idea of the categorical imperative, by which he means the imperative or command that we should always follow regardless of our own wishes or those of others. We shall see later how he reaches this conclusion but for now we need take notice of its basic features.

Tony Blair and Lord Levy

The categorical imperative is a principle that is a priori, that is to say, it is independent of experience. You don't reach the categorical imperative by investigating human nature, but rather by examining the logical character of our sense of what we ought to do. his major approach to this problem was to take note of the character of our ordinary actions, which he said we do for the sake of the benefits or consequences that we expect to follow from them. We go to work in order to get money to buy life's necessities and we apply for promotion to get more of life's glittering prizes including of course a sense of what fine fellows we are. Almost all of what we do is done - arguably - for the sake of what we will gain from our actions. We do things for the sake of anticipated rewards. Kant claimed all actions of this sort could be seen as examples where we are applying a maxim or rule of a  single logical type which he called the hypothetical imperative. What he means is that we do things for the sake of some anticipated benefit. If I pass my exams, then 'll be able to get a better job. If I make myself a bit more attractive I might win myself a better husband or a classier wife. If I urge my sons to get out of bed every day, I might make them less idle and more switched on to the world. if I give a lot of money to charity, I will get a lot of tax relief and maybe a good name for myself and invitations to places where I might not have previously been welcome. (I'm paraphrasing Tony Blair's advisor, Lord Levy). Kant's term for this is the hypothetical imperative. That is to say all the self-interested actions of our lives can be expressed as variants of the formula If you want X, then you ought to do Y. The if clause is the hypothetical part, the imperative is the part that says what you will have to do to achieve that end or aim.

You can guess where this analysis is going. The hypothetical imperative is a logical formula that covers just about everything that we do in life. If people are doing things in order to attain or acquire benefits of one kind or another, then according to Kant they are not behaving morally. They are merely acting in their own interests. For an action to count as moral you must do it with no thought of personal gain or any kind. You must do it simply because you see that it is your duty to that regardless of any consequences good or bad. You should do things because they are the right thing to do. Kant called this contrasting principle the categorical imperative. The problem here is how to recognize a categorical imperative. Some people - many in fact today, if not a majority - would claim that everything we do is done for our own sake or for some perhaps disguised benefit. It was in fact the duc de la Rochefoucauld who first clearly established the thesis that all human actions are done out of self-interest and for no other reason. His Reflections,  or Sentences or Moral maxims (1665-78) are all designed to show that our seemingly virtuous behaviour is in fact just an expression of self-interest. We are in other words prisoners of self-deception: 'What we term virtues are often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune or our own industry manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste'. This is undoubtedly true, but the key word here is 'often' - are we often self-deceived or are we as some would claim always self-deceived? The long history of the novel can be seen as an extended examination of this thesis. Darwin, Freud and Marx all in their different ways helped to undermine our sense of moral confidence in what we do.

Kant however is quite clear that human beings can and do act for purely moral reasons and that therefore altruism is a real and not a spurious entity. So it is fair to say that a lot depends on how successful Kant is in establishing his thesis for a categorical imperative. This is what we should be keeping clearly in mind as we read the Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals. We need to be clear what it is and what logical tests we need to apply to establish its existence. Of course, even if you admit the existence of categorical imperatives, that does not mean that people are not living their lives in varieties of self-deception, but it does mean that the prospect of escaping from self-deception and acting in a genuinely moral way is not an illusion.


We will look at these questions in more detail next time but it is worth saying a little more now about the general character of the categorical imperative. What kind of actions do we do exclusively because we think that they are the right thing to do, because we feel that we ought to do them even though we gain no advantage from them and may even suffer loss or death as a result? Well, we may think of things like helping those in need, as the Good Samaritan did in New Testament parable, or approving when someone risks his or her life to save the life of others or to save them from terrible harm.    Christians would certainly see these actions as example of a rule to 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. More ordinarily we might think that a person ought to keep his promise even if it will involve him in costs of suffering or even perhaps betrayals of someone else's interests, because we think that a person should always follow the rule, 'Keep your promises!' Similarly, we think that people should always tell the truth and honour their parents.You should not commit murder. Or adultery, and so on. Never. What is noticeable here is that all these examples is that they are all duties, and in fact duties that are sanctioned by religion. They can all be expressed in the form, 'Do or Do not do X'. There is no if in sight here, circumstances and consequences are considered irrelevant.

The 'Good Samaritan', Chartres cathedral

You might object that there are always reasons why we might condone or excuse the neglect of our neighbour and broken promises or lies or murder or adultery, but is usually hard to praise such actions. Who praises Scrooge? Who thinks Count Levin was right to abandon Anna Karenina? Who would have blamed Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenburg, if he had succeeded in killing Adolf Hitler? Though, on the other hand, we all admire the successful deception and trickery of an Odysseus against the Cyclops or the British Military Intelligence when they outwitted the Germans with their elaborate deception in the 'Man Who Never Was' operation. How would Kant deal with these complexities? We will have to think about these things later when we meet.

Scrooge, forerunner of Goldman Sachs

One last point in this initial survey of our text. Kant's moral philosophy is an ethic of duty. Our lives are in his view a matter of doing our duty and doing it perfectly and absolutely with no leeway allowed for the compromises which circumstances so often force upon us. It has, as we have seen, a strongly biblical feel, but without the authority of a divine command. This is like a secular version of the ten commandments, if only because  these commandments are the prime examples of things that we feel we ought to do regardless of consequences. But is this a proper view of life? Is this what life is all about? if we lived our lives just doing but doing completely the things we ought to do according to Kant's prescription would we we full or complete or happy people? Kant would presumably say that these quibbles are beside the point. it does not matter if you are an interesting or fulfilled personality. It only matters that you should be a moral person. Do we agree with this? Or do we not also want a life that makes sense to us in other terms? Don't we want to be more than just moral? And if you agree with that, you might like to ask yourself in what ways you might like your from and for your life.

Lev Tolstoy, author of Anna Karenina