Kant and his Philosophy - Essay Example

?Doing unto others as you would have done to yourself, might be one of the clearest ways of articulating the Christian 'golden mean'. It will be argued in the following, that this notion has an equivalent in Kant's notion of the categorical imperative. As Kant is philosophy and not revelation, the focus of this discussion will be directed to the discernible arguments presented by Kant, and careful attention will be paid to his idea of 'universability'. The test of universality, or universability, is a like secular or a Kantian, golden mean. In The Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals, which is regarded as the foundation for ‘deontology’, Kant attempted to demonstrate that the duty of man, or of humans, was to obey and act in accordance with the categorical imperative. As mentioned in the question to this essay itself, the maxim in question of the imperative runs as follows: act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. First, some of the first aspects to note with regard to the imperative, are that it is something which is obeyed as a duty by what he considers to be a morally good individual. Secondly, it is a moral obligation, and finally, and as a preliminary note which will be expanded upon, this is a notion which facilitates any morally 'good' action. Thus, the first section of the Groundwork concerns the general notion of obedience as it is connected with the categorical imperative, and the second section reviews in more detail the doctrines about the categorical imperative, and considers those aspects which might be taken as a criticism or potential criticism of the doctrine itself. From the general, to the more specific, an important dimension of the whole aspect of the imperative is the notion of universalibility, and this is related to the aspect of 'willing' something which can or could be equally willed by any other person In the Groundwork, Kant argues that a 'good' man is going to use the criterion of 'universality' for all of his actions, as a maxim which works as a standard to judge good from bad actions, or ethical from unethical decisions. This implies that the means for this obedience or duty to the categorical imperative also involves a certain sense of 'autonomy' for the individual. He maintains that the “categorical imperative” a “maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law . . . 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 as far determined by universal laws.” [Pojman, Ed., 1998: 302]. Accordingly, the “universal imperative of duty may” is “the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature. [Pojman, Ed., 1998: 302] Having stated the law in question (the categorical imperative), Kant proceeds to both demonstrate this through an example, which is an example that also serves for purposes of proving this as universally valid as a criterion for moral action. Thus, with regard to the aforementioned notion of 'autonomy', or the moral choice of the individual, Kant establishes what might be called a property of ethical legislation which qualifies as a command. In the second section of the Groundwork, which is a section under the subtitle or subheading of the 'doctrine of virtue', Kant asserts the following with respect to this important 'property' or salient aspect, and which qualifies as both an example and a demonstration or proof the categorical imperative: "Another man in need finds himself forced to borrow money . . . the maxim of his action would then be expressed as follows: when I believe myself to be in need of money, I will borrow money and promise to pay it back, although I know that I can never do so." [Pojman, Ed., 1998: 302] In this example, Kant argues that although it is possible for myself, or anyone else to adopt this maxim, that is, as an application or concrete example of the categorical imperative, he also knows that explicit in this example is the fact that it is impossible for "everyone" to adopt this notion or maxim. If this example is put to the test of the aforementioned notion of universality, that is, the willing of everyone to do the same, then, it would be the case that nobody would be in a position trust anyone else with regard to promises related to borrowing and lending, thus, no one would in turn be capable of acquiring a particular service or a good through promises, which has the further consequence, and the most important consequence of the impossibility of the maxim itself. Kant's thinking in this regard can be reconstructed in the following way. Suppose O is a dutiful action. Then P's performance of O is morally good only if her maxim has a moral content. But P's maxim has a moral content only if it is no accident that her motive produces O. And it is no accident that P's motive produces O only if her maxim describes O-ing as dutiful. So P's performance of O is morally good only if her maxim describes O-ing as dutiful. If this reconstruction is correct, then ‘an act is moral only if it is not caused by an accident’ is a condition for the moral goodness of an action because it is a condition for it maxim's having a moral content. And this in turn is why Kant holds that only the motive of duty will meet this condition. But what does it means to say that the motive of duty alone does not lead to dutiful actions merely now and then, or by "fortune" or "accident"? What is it that ordinary moral knowledge holds is a condition of morally good action? Call a motive "reliable" if it makes the performance of a dutiful action more probable than not, and this is what seems to be implied in terms of “law” [Solomon, Ed., 1992: 260; 262], which he claims is an extension “duty” and not “inclination”. Moreover, it is what he also refers to as defining “moral worth” [Solomon, Ed., 1992: 260]. There are many properties of motives that might make it improbable that they will lead to dutiful actions. Many will not have to do so much with the content of a person's rationale for acting, with a motive's cognitive aspects, but with its non-cognitive aspects, such as its invariability, availability or strength, aspects or variables which Kant associates with the “will” [Solomon, Ed., 1992: 261]. Hence, being changeable, weak, or not always available to act on, for instance, will make a motive unreliable in a non-cognitive or non-rational sense. A failure of reliability in this sense will be when, because of such properties, it will not be probable that if an agent has an unreliable motive, she will succeed in acting as she intends to act, and if what she intends to do is a dutiful action, then it will not be probable that she will act dutifully. A person's motive might be unreliable for a quite different reason, however. For suppose a person's rationale for acting makes no reference to the fact that her action is dutiful. Then, no matter how strong, invariable and available such a motive is, it will still not be perfectly probable that if it motivates a person, she will perform a dutiful action. For the description of the action contained in such a rationale will not single out all and only dutiful actions. For instance, the description of the action contained in the example of the person helping the disabled person, can be understood in terms of having a motivating rationale might have been something like "helping a neighbor in need", with no mention of the fact that it is dutiful. But an action that satisfies this description need not be a dutiful action; one can easily imagine helping a neighbor in need by doing something one ought not do (lying, for example, might satisfy such a description, since there does not seem to be anything about lying in itself that is unsympathetic). Hence, if this is what motivated this person to help, then even if it were strong, invariable, and always available, it could well have led her to do something that is contrary to duty. And if such a rationale could lead her to do something contrary to duty, then it will not be perfectly reliable, not because of the consequences of the action, but because of its content. Thus, if the description of the action contained in a person's rationale for acting does not single out all and only dutiful actions, then it will be not be perfectly reliable in leading her to act dutifully, and this is the crux of the argument which suggests that ‘consequences’ of a moral act are irrelevant, but instead, an argument which defends the idea that only a consideration of the ‘motive’, and in accordance with ‘duty’. If any action is to be morally good it is not enough that it should conform to the moral law--it must also be done for the sake of the moral law: where this is not so, the conformity is only too contingent and precarious, since the non-moral ground at work will now and then produce actions which accord with the law, but very often actions which transgress it [Solomon, Ed., 1992: 252]. Kant held that only the motive of duty avoids leading by mere accident to the performance of actions which are dutiful. But, he thought, a morally good action should have a motive that does not produce dutiful actions by mere accident. So only actions from duty are morally good. Thus, Kant holds that it is a condition of an action's being morally good that its motive does not lead to dutiful actions by accident. And his view that only dutiful actions from duty have moral worth appears to be based partly on the claim that only the motive of duty meets this condition. In the following, I will explain how the issue of the connection between motives and actions arises, and briefly set out the two interpretations of Kant's claim that the motive of duty alone leads non-accidentally to dutiful actions. The categorical imperative parallels the notion of the golden mean on a number of notable fronts as outlined in this analysis. The idea that you should not will anything that you wouldn't want to will to the universal, is just another form of 'doing unto others...'. The focus of this discussion was toward discerning what Kant meant by universality, and how universality is what makes his deontological ethics, an expression of the golden mean. The goal of this analysis, was to provide a notion based on the reasons of premises as opposed to the belief from faith. Bibliography: Kant, I. “Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals” in Pojman, Louis (Ed.). Ethical Theory. Third Edition (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1998). Solomon, Robert C. (Ed.). Morality and the Good Life. Second Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992). KANT'S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE AND THE GOLDEN MEAN Read More