Morality and Humanity In Kants View - Essay Example

Morality & Humanity In Kant's View Kant argued that moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality he dubbed the "Categorical Imperative" (CI). Immorality thus involves a violation of the CI and is thereby irrational. Kant's first formulation of the CI 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." (G 4:421) O'Neill (1975, 1989) and Rawls (1989, 1999), among others, take this formulation in effect to summarize a decision procedure for moral reasoning, and I will follow them: First, formulate a maxim that enshrines your reason for acting as you propose. Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances. Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this law of nature. If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is morally permissible. Throughout his moral works, Kant returns time and again to the question of the method moral philosophy should employ when pursuing these aims. A basic theme of these discussions is that the fundamental philosophical issues must be addressed a priori, that is, without drawing on observations of human beings and their behavior. Once we "seek out and establish" the fundamental principle of morality a priori, then we may consult facts drawn from experience in order to determine how best to apply this principle to human beings and generate particular conclusions about how we ought to act. Kant's insistence on an a priorimethod to seek out and establish fundamental moral principles, however, does not always appear to be matched by his own practice. The Groundwork, for instance, makes repeated appeals to empirical facts (that our wills are determined by practical principles, that various motivations are variable in producing right actions, and so on). Later ethical works rely even more heavily on empirical generalizations. Kant did not take himself to be employing these assumptions in seeking out and establishing the fundamental moral principle, only in applying it to human beings. Nevertheless, it is not always easy to tell whether Kant's arguments gain their plausibility only by relying on ideas established by observations of human being and the world they inhabit. Kant's example of a perfect duty to others concerns a promise you might consider making but have no intention of keeping in order to get needed money. Naturally, being rational requires not contradicting oneself, but there is no self-contradiction in the maxim "I will make lying promises when it achieves something I want". An immoral action clearly does not involve a self-contradiction in this sense (as would the maxim of finding a married bachelor). Kant's position is that it is irrational to perform an action if that action's maxim contradicts itself once made into a universal law of nature. The maxim of lying whenever it gets what you want generates a contradiction once you try to combine it with the universalized version that all rational agents must, by a law of nature, lie when it gets what they want. Here is one way of seeing how this might work: If I conceive of a world in which everyone by nature must try to deceive people any time it will get what they want, I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving one's word could ever arise. So I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving one's word exists. My maxim, however, is to make a deceptive promise in order to get needed money. And it is a necessary means of doing this that a practice of taking the word of others exists, so that someone might take my word and I take advantage of their doing so. Thus, in trying to conceive of my maxim in a world in which no one ever takes anyone's word in such circumstances, I am trying to conceive of this: a world in which no practice of giving one's word exists, but also, at the very same time, a world in which just such a practice does exist, for me to make use of in my maxim. It is a world containing my promise and a world in which there can be no promises. Hence, it is inconceivable that my maxim exists together with itself as a universal law. Since it is inconceivable that these two things should exist together, I am forbidden ever to act on the maxim of lying to get money. Most philosophers who find Kant's views attractive find them so because of the Humanity formulation of the CI. 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 CI '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. But this very intuitiveness can also invite misunderstandings. First, the Humanity formula does not rule out using people as means to our ends. Clearly this would be an absurd demand, since we do this all the time. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any life that is recognizably human without the use of others in pursuit of our goals. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the chairs we sit on and the computers we type at are gotten only by way of talents and abilities that have been developed through the wills of many people. What the Humanity formula rules out is engaging in this pervasive use of Humanity in such a way that we treat it as a mere means to our ends. Thus, the difference between a horse and a taxi driver is not that we may use one but not the other as a means of transportation. Unlike a horse, the taxi driver's Humanity must at the same time be treated as an end in itself. Second, it is not human beings per se but the 'Humanity' in human beings that we must treat as an end in itself. Our 'Humanity' is that collection of features that make us distinctively human, and these include capacities to engage in self-directed rational behavior and to adopt and pursue our own ends, and any other capacities necessarily connected with these. Thus, supposing that the taxi driver has freely exercised his rational capacities in pursuing his line of work, we make permissible use of these capacities as a means when we behave in a way that he could, when exercising his rational capacities, consent to - for instance, by paying an agreed on price. Third, the idea of an end has three senses for Kant, two positive senses and a negative sense. An end in the first positive sense is a thing we will to produce or bring about in the world. For instance, if losing weight is my end, then losing weight is something I aim to produce. An end in this sense guides my actions in that once I will to produce something, I then deliberate about means of producing it. Humanity is not an 'end' in this sense, though even in this case, the end "lays down a law" for me. Once I have adopted an end in this sense, it dictates that I do something: I will act in ways that will bring about that end. References: Allison, Henry, 1990, Kant's Theory of Freedom. New York: Cambridge U. P. Aune, Bruce, 1979, Kant's Theory of Morals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P. Baron, Marcia, 1995, Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology Cornell: Cornell U.P. Read More