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.