Most of the Ten Commandments or the Decalogue are classic examples of such maxims. Do not commit murder and Do not steal are clear examples of maxims that it makes sense to universalise or become binding on everybody. It is the moral law itself, the categorical imperative, that is the supreme or primary principle. The maxims which may be derived from it are secondary principles, for the simple reason that there are dozens of maxims that could quite conceivably be derived from it. The beauty of the moral law is that it prescribes no particular line of action nor does it lay down any single set of rules which must be obeyed. It is, if you like, content-free. All that it requires of us is the duty to examine any rule or maxim (which we may wish to recommend or adopt) in the light of the non-contradictory and universal logic of the moral law.
2. The second formulation, the ‘Formula of the End in Itself’ (Paton, p.129), is as follows: ‘So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only’ (Fundamental Principles p.47). In other words, treat people with the respect that, as people, they deserve. Moreover, treat yourself with the same respect as you would treat others. Why should people automatically deserve respect? The reason is complex but, basically, reduces to this: People are free and rational agents who should therefore abide by their own maxims assuming that such maxims have been tested against the moral law. This is sometimes known as the Respect for Persons Theory, and Kant sometimes refers to it as the ‘practical imperative’ (p.47) rather than simply another formulation of the categorical imperative.
3. The third formulation, given the title the ‘Formula of the Kingdom of Ends’ (Paton p.129) is cast thus: ‘Every rational being must so act as if he were by his maxims in every case a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends’ (Fundamental Principles, p.57). This is an interesting version and emphasises two facts: (a) we ought all to regard ourselves as members of one community (universal kingdom), and (b) that all members of that community are deserving of respect as autonomous, rational and free individuals (ends in themselves). Moreover, ‘In this kingdom nothing conflicts with reason, and the rational being is both subject and sovereign of the law which there obtains’. (Scruton, p.71). This last version of the imperative appears to act as a bridge between ethics and politics, though a politics of a particularly idealistic hue.
Autonomous and Heteronomous Will
It is clear why Kant makes much of the will – the part of the mind which gives impetus to our actions. The truly rational and truly free will is to be distinguished from the rationally constrained and morally fettered will. Only the former, the autonomous will, is able to understand and operate from the categorical imperative; the latter, the heteronomous will, is only able to work from the hypothetical imperative.
So, for example, suppose there are two butchers in the town. (It must be stressed that this is not an example used by Kant). One of them, Frank, desires increased trade, a good reputation and an ever expanding turnover. In order to achieve this he sells only the best meat, gives excellent service and never cheats his customers. The other butcher, Fred, does exactly the same as Frank, namely, sells the best meat, gives excellent service and never cheats a customer, except that he does so simply because he believes, by reason, that he ought to, and for no other thought than this. His motive for acting in the way that he does is, therefore, pure. It is unconditional. He does not do it in order to get increased trade but simply because he thinks that he ought so to act. Two things need to be said. Firstly, it will be obvious that Frank is working from a hypothetical imperative and that Fred is working from a categorical imperative. Secondly, it will be equally obvious that Fred’s motive is derived from an autonomous will, whereas Frank’s motive is derived from a heteronomous will.
Autonomous Will: An autonomous will, then, is one which acts freely and rationally, without any compulsion from another, or provoked by any desire within. The person who cultivates the autonomous will is one who willingly and dutifully abides by the moral law. No inner desires, wants or passions prompt the person to action, except for the simple desire to act rationally according to the non-contradictory logic of the universal command. ‘Autonomy of the will is that property of it by which it is a law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition)’ (Fundamental Principles, p.59).
Heteronomous Will: A heteronomous will, on the other hand, is one which does not act freely, although it may often seem to prompt rational action. Our butcher, Frank, clearly seems to act rationally when he sells only the best meat, gives excellent custom and so on. Reason dictates that this is the quickest and most appropriate way of securing a decent profit. But he is not, according to Kant’s dictum, acting freely, rationally or morally – the reason being that he is compelled to act in that seemingly rational fashion because of his desire to increase his turnover, not because he wishes to obey the moral law. Profit, not obedience to the moral law, is his motive. Any desire, any passion, any end or purpose that is beyond the sole recognition of duty to the logic of the moral law makes for a heteronomous and not an autonomous will. As Kant says, ‘If the will seeks the law which is to determine it anywhere else than in the fitness of its maxims to be universal laws of its own dictation, consequently if it goes out of itself and seeks this law in the character of any of its objects (e.g. profit, service to customers, reputation ..) there always results heteronomy’ (Fundamental Principles, p.59. The phrases in brackets are ours not Kant’s). I must feel free and unconstrained in the recognition of my duty to obey the moral law. If I feel obliged against my will to obey the law then I am not acting morally. To obey the moral law is not to be a slave to it because the law is the expression of my own rational nature. To obey the moral law is, therefore, only to obey my own rational will. Here, freedom and necessity are identical. In the case of the butcher who sells for profit, necessity is the monetary law of the public market-place not the moral law of the inner rational will.
Truth-Telling and Promise-Keeping
After giving the first formulation of the categorical imperative in the Fundamental Principles, namely the ‘Formula of the Universal Law’, Kant goes on to offer four concrete examples (pp.39-41) of the way in which certain maxims may be logically derived from the moral law. The examples, in turn, are about:
- the irrationality of suicide. The resulting maxim would be ‘Do not commit suicide’;
- the irrationality of breaking a promise. The resulting two maxims, as we have already stated, can be summarised thus: ‘Always tell the truth’ and ‘Always keep a promise’;
- the irrationality of squandering one’s natural gifts and talents, resulting in the possible maxim: ‘Cultivate your talents to the full’;
- the irrationality of refusing help to those clearly in need which may be expressed in the following maxim: ‘Always try to help those who are worse off than yourself’.
As it is the second example which is of particular concern to us it is worth quoting the passage in full:
“Another (person) finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. He knows that he will not be able to repay it, but sees also that nothing will be lent to him, unless he promises stoutly to repay it in a definite time. He desires to make this promise, but he has still so much conscience as to ask himself: Is it not unlawful and inconsistent with duty to get out of a difficulty in this way? Suppose, however, that he resolves to do so, then the maxim of his action would be expressed thus: When I think myself in want of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know that I can never do so. Now this principle of self-love or of one’s own advantage may perhaps be consistent with my whole future welfare; but the question now is, Is it right? I change then the suggestion of self-love into a universal law, and state the question thus: How would it be if my maxim were a universal law? Then I see at once that it could never hold as a universal law of nature, but would necessarily contradict itself. For supposing it to be a universal law that everyone when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise whatever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself would become impossible, as well as the end that one might have in view in it, since no one would consider that anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such statements as vain pretences’. (p.40).
This is clear to see. If these two negative maxims - do not bother to tell the truth or to keep a promise - were to be universalised, then truth-telling and promise-keeping would soon fall into disuse. No one would believe anyone. I might promise to repay the loan and yet never intend to; similarly, my friend might agree to lend me the money but intend never to carry out his promise to do so. The meanings attached to truth-telling and promise-keeping would soon disappear, along with the logic and social tradition that stand behind them. Soon I would not be able to break a promise nor to tell a lie since both concepts and traditions would have lost their meaning. For telling lies and breaking promises assumes that there are recognised traditions of truth-telling and promise-keeping to break. If I universalised my telling of lies I would be logically destroying the accepted tradition that on this occasion I wished to break. Note that, for Kant, it is not my honour, or my friendship, or my friend’s feelings that are at stake; what is at stake is the illogicality, the irrationality of the action when it becomes universalised.
After a brief discussion of each of the four examples, Kant then goes on to describe and analyse the second formulation of the categorical imperative, namely, the ‘Formula of the End in Itself’. After stating the second formulation Kant considers once again each of the examples. With reference to the example which is of direct interest to us he says:
‘...as regards necessary duties, or those of strict obligation, towards others; he who he is thinking of making a lying promise to others will see at once that he would be using another man merely as a means, without the latter containing at the same time the end in himself. For he whom I propose by such a promise to use for my own purposes cannot possibly assent to my mode of acting towards him, and therefore cannot himself contain the end of this action. This violation of the principle of humanity in other men is more obvious if we take in examples of attacks on the freedom and property of others. For then it is clear that he who transgresses the rights of men intends to use the person of others merely as means, without considering that as rational beings they ought always to be esteemed also as ends, that is, as beings who must be capable of containing in themselves the end of the very same action.’ (pp. 47-8)
We can clearly see the connection between the second formulation of the categorical imperative and the second discussion of the promise–keeping maxim. It is obvious that if I intend to obtain money under false pretences (by promising to pay it back, knowing full well that I do not intend doing so), then I am using the lender simply as a means to my own ends. It is plain that I have little regard for the lender if I am prepared to lie deliberately to him simply for personal gain. Moreover, if I am prepared to do this, and I wish to universalise my negative maxim of ‘Always break promises’ and ‘Never tell the truth’, then I am logically committed to having everyone else treat me simply as a means to their ends. I am opening up the door for everyone else to swindle me without any compunction or consideration. Clearly, if I were to assent to this I would not be rational but singularly foolish.
Some Criticisms
There are, as one can imagine, dozens of criticisms that can be levelled at Kant’s theory. We propose, however, to deal with just five of them.
1. F. Copleston in Wolff to Kant: A History of Philosophy Vol VI (1960) and R. Walker, in Kant: The Arguments of the Philosophers (1978), both commend Kant for the quality of his abstraction, but maintain that the moral law, as presented to us, is rather imprecise, if not downright unclear. Walker goes so far as to say that the categorical imperative has a ‘regrettable vagueness’ (p.159) about it. However, the criticism is unfounded. Although there are three formulations of the moral law each one is remarkably clear. And what is important about each is the impeccable logic that underpins it. Every time we universalise a maxim (such as ‘Always tell the truth’ and so on) according to the logic of the categorical imperative we find that it works. The imperative itself has no content and recommends no specific maxim. It is necessarily devoid of content. We, as the rational and free agents, must construct the various maxims which are to guide our moral lives. It is up to us to provide our own moral content. As long as we are prepared to submit each of our maxims to the test of the moral law, discard them if they appear not to conform to it, and affirm them if they do, then, for Kant it is up to us to decide how we live our lives.
The two principle questions we must ask ourselves when constructing our own moral code or set of maxims are:
(i) Would it make sense for others to act in this way?
(ii) Would it make sense for me to be treated in the way I propose to treat others?
2. G. Warnock in his article entitled simply ‘Kant’ (D.J. O'Connor (ed.), A Critical History of Western Philosophy, 1965) and H. J. Paton in The Categorical Imperative (1947) both point to a much more serious objection to Kant’s argument. The objection is to do with the account of freedom and its connection with the moral law. Kant, as we have seen, wishes to justify the universality of the moral law partly on the grounds of: (a) our rationality which allows us to recognise its logical force and non-contradictory nature, and (b) our actual freedom to assent to it. Paton’s brief description of the objection cannot be bettered: ‘...we have no independent insight into the alleged necessity for presupposing freedom. Kant is indeed ingenious and, I think, sound in suggesting that freedom...is a necessary presupposition of all thinking. This may serve as a defence of the presupposition...but it is not sufficient to justify this presupposition.’ (p.244).
3. The third objection is to do with the ‘conflict of duties’. According to this objection, obeying the first formulation of the moral law may conflict with our duty to obey the second formulation. Therefore, the maxim ‘Always tell the truth’ may clash directly with the maxim ‘Respect and preserve all human life’. Suppose, for example, you were hiding a Jewish refugee in your home during the German occupation of Holland and a Nazi officer knocked at your door and demanded to know the number and nationality of all the occupants in your house. Do you lie and preserve the life of the refugee, or do you tell the truth and condemn her to almost certain death? W. D. Ross in The Right and the Good (1930) sought to eliminate this conflict by constructing a hierarchy of duties in which, conceivably, the preservation of life principle could override the truth-telling principle.
4. The fourth objection may be regarded as the Humean Problem. It is obvious from all that has been said that Kant lays absolute primacy on the faculty of human reason. Like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and many others he sees rationality as the distinguishing feature of human beings. As human beings, therefore, our principal function is to deploy our rationality accordingly. However, Hume’s analysis of human nature is not nearly as optimistic when it comes to the part reason plays in human affairs. For Hume, (Treatise on Human Nature, 1739; Inquiry Concerning the Principles Of Morals, 1751) reason is, and indeed should be, subordinate to emotions, wants and desires of the individual, or in his famous phrase, ‘reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them’. Here we have a rather different view of the functions of reason, duty and obligation! For Kant reason and rationality come first, emotions and desires come second, if at all! For Hume it is the other way round.
5. The fifth and final criticism may be best referred to as the Aristotelian Problem. A. MacIntyre, in After Virtue: a study in moral theory (1981) argues that Kant has rejected Aristotelian teleology of moral behaviour. What does this mean? Well, for Aristotle (in the Nicomachean Ethics), and also for MacIntyre, human beings start life as potentially good persons; they only become actual good persons by deploying the moral and intellectual virtues, those qualities of mind and character help them build worthwhile and happy lives. This, then, is their purpose or telos: to cultivate the virtues so that they may be able to live out their supreme good which, for Aristotle, as for many others, is happiness. This automatically leads onto MacIntyre’s next criticism which is that Kant has elevated human reason above and beyond any other human quality or characteristic. As such, Kant’s single-factor theory is wholly unbalanced. What of the remaining ‘virtues’ or ‘human excellences’? Moreover, MacIntyre argues that Kant effectively ripped ethical conduct and moral reasoning from everyday contexts in which they find their real meaning. The position taken by both Aristotle and MacIntyre is one which sits squarely between Kant and Hume. For Kant we abide by the categorical imperative out of duty and obligation with no regard for our own feelings or desires; for those of a Humean disposition we would, no doubt, adopt the hypothetical imperative which allows us (within the bounds, perhaps, of good taste) to gain the object of our passion. The Kantian is driven by the autonomous will; the Humean by the heteronomous will. For Aristotle and MacIntyre it is not a question of one or the other, but both/and. The Aristotelian virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom allows us to balance self-interest (the dual package of the heteronomous will and the hypothetical imperative) with the interests of others (the combination of the autonomous will and the categorical imperative). In the case of our butcher, for example, the self-interested motives governing the increased profit, greater custom and so on are as important as the pure, rational and obligatory duty to obey the moral law.
However, even taking into account all of the criticisms of Kant’s moral theory it still remains as one of the most powerfully argued and carefully presented justifications for belief in the existence of certain rational moral principles.
