The Concept of Disinterestedness as Central for the Ethics of Kant - Essay Example

A prominent German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is considered to be the last main thinker of the Enlightenment who greatly influenced the philosophical thought. The interest that Kant had in the problem of morality lead him to elaborate his ethics that initiated what is called the Kantian revolution in the moral philosophy. Let us explain Kant`s theory of ethics and try to see in what sense it is an ethics of conscience and what is the source of the moral worth of an action. First of all, we should mention that the chief postulate of the philosophy of Kant is that the mind can know objects existing in the external world only via notions of space and time, which are sensible forms produced by mind itself. Kant maintains that these forms, by virtue of structuring the sensual information, enable the knowledge as such, and concludes that all we know about objects is their appearance in time and space, in this way drawing attention to the fact that the mind adds something to its knowledge, fundamentally limiting itself in the process. Kant used these views as an argument in his moral philosophy to show that humans are free because it is the power of their reason that posits a moral law for their actions. In frames of the classical tradition, moral philosophy was viewed as ethics based on the human situation in the world, and on the realities external in relation to mind. Under this view, moral goodness is rooted in the nature of man, the nature of things, and God. This approach gave rise to Natural Law theory of ethics, and since the classical period the moral philosophy offered few new perspectives. It was Kant who offered a truly new perspective in the moral philosophy as he rationalized ethics by his exaltation of Pure Reason as a system of beliefs that does not depend on sensual experience, and at the same time used his Christian background to absolutize his moral ideal. He grounded morality not on the traditional notion of good but on the pure obligation, akin to his perception of knowledge as based on some a priori, i.e. independent of experience, forms inherent to mind. In this way Kant replaced the traditional Christian ethics with reason, which became the factor that shapes human life, and ascribed to morality absolutised and sacred status. Thus, as the external reality has been demoted as the source of morality, a total change of the foundation of moral philosophy occurred and the rational ethics had to be separated from external objects and had to be inferred only from the internal qualities of the human mind. The concept of disinterestedness is central for the ethics of Kant. To some degree this notion is one of the elements that Kant had in common with Christianity with its search for unselfish love. But in Kantian disinterestedness love is absent, which makes the ethics based on Pure Reason distinct from the traditional Christian morality. Indeed, Kant thought that to have a truly disinterested motive, any striving for good, including love and our desire for pleasure and happiness, as the end of an action must be disqualified as being not moral but as the one which is inevitably interested. Of course, the desire for pleasure, our self-interest, our self-love, and after all our prudence may seem to be related to morality, as these elements of our motivation accompany most actions of man, but for Kant they cannot constitute even slightest motives of the moral act, and instead deprive it of morality. As Kant says that the only possible thing which can be considered unqualifiedly good is a good will, therefore human desires cannot be motives for the pure and autonomous moral will. Similarly, good will remains good only because it is an exposition of Pure Reason, and because it conforms to obligation exclusively for the sake of obligation, forming the only possible mode of a truly moral motivation. There is just one impulse that can lead us to this authentic motivation - reverence of the moral law, because such a respect is the only factor that reason lets into moral life. Also, this reverence is a peculiar emotion, a sensation that is immediately produced by reason as such, without any involvement of sensible objects. This law is no longer the classical Natural Law, but law as a categorical imperative, expressed as "you are obliged" and imprinted in the human mind by Pure Reason as a priori mode of human behavior, in contrast to hypothetical imperatives which Kant describes as conditional (if A is a condition then B is a proper action). Kant deprives of moral relevance not only subjective ends, but also the absolute ultimate end as he assumes that if a person loves God, he or she does it for own selfish purposes and manifests self-love, again betraying complete disinterestedness. Therefore, God is of no concern for Kant, and even thought the existence of God may be one of the axioms of the Practical Reason this fact does not have direct relation to ethics, because morality under this view is formed independently from belief in God and other unknowable concepts. On the basis of all this, the guiding Practical Reason is utterly autonomous, being not dependent on any law except that which it constitutes for itself, or more exactly, which is identical with itself. In this case the compulsion "you are obliged" can be thought of as an intrusion of Pure Reason, which extends its law on the empirical realm of application. The presence of such a law is a given fact and stands in no need of justification. The only possible course of action is to obey this law and to ignore the consequences of an action in the process of the moral decision-making. In this way, Kant offers the ultimate ethics of conscience. However, a question arises as to how does an abstract form of obligation assumes practically instructive forms, especially in situations when its absolute nature prevents it from interaction with natural factors? To address this issue Kant employs for a measurement of morality of an act the notion of conformity to reason, and offers the formula for the universal law in which he proposes to act only on such a maxim that will make a person to wish that such a maxim becomes a universal law. For example, consider the situation when you decide whether to kill a person who has hurt you. In this case there is no logical contradiction ensuing from universalization of this maxim, but such a law would require that you get killed if you hurt anyone, which could quite probably happen. More specifically, Kant offers the following procedure of moral reasoning. Firstly, we state a maxim; secondly, we absolutize that proposed maxim as a universal law for everyone; thirdly, we check if this maxim can be coherently maintained in the real world; and fourthly, if this maxim can be maintained we ask ourselves if we would rationally choose to hold on such a maxim in the world where it is valid. If to this last question we give a positive answer, then the action which we contemplate is morally permissible. If our tentative maxim does not meet the third step Kant says that we have a perfect duty not to act on it, and if our maxim does not meet the fourth step we have an imperfect duty to follow a line of action that can nevertheless allow for exceptions. The contrast between duties is that perfect duties can be stated as ‘we must never’, and imperfect duties can be stated as ‘we must sometimes and to a certain degree’. While because of the logical universalism of the Kantian law it is easier to determine what action is right in his system than in that of Natural Law, the detachment of Kant`s theory of ethics from the nature makes it external and irrevocably alien to the personal subjectivity, so by fundamental separation of morality from the natural world Kant disturbed the balance of ethics, and turned ethics into a realm existing a priori, and not related to the moral experience of man. He founded his ethics no more on the notion of good but on the obligatory requirement of the norm, and by this distorted the essence of the moral philosophy, originally founded in the nature and experience, and transformed moral philosophy into a strictly normative field. Considering the religious background of Kant, it is ironic that his ethics seemingly turned out to be more Christian than traditional ethics of Christianity itself. Indeed, what underlies the Kantian ethics of Pure Reason is a kind of an absolutised and equalitarian super Christianity without God, who is replaced by an abstract and absolute Reason. In this way Kant managed to preserve the holiness of the moral law and moral duties, the concept of the complete disinterestedness of a moral act, the independence and freedom of the will which is one with the law, the imperative nature of the moral law that restrains our disobedient nature, and the dignity of man and our obligations. Sources Lavine, T., Z. From Socrates to Sartre : The Philosophic Quest. Bantam Books, 1984. Read More