He thus believed that a perfectly rational being must also be perfectly moral because a perfectly rational being subjectively finds it necessary to do what is rationally necessary. Because humans are not perfectly rational they partly act by instinct , Kant believed that humans must conform their subjective will with objective rational laws, which he called conformity obligation.
Just as physical laws exist prior to physical beings, rational laws morality exist prior to rational beings.
Therefore, according to Kant, rational morality is universal and cannot change depending on circumstance. Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.
Kant argued that rational beings can never be treated merely as means to ends; they must always also be treated as ends themselves, requiring that their own reasoned motives must be equally respected. A rational being cannot rationally consent to being used merely as a means to an end, so they must always be treated as an end.
Because all rational agents rationally will themselves to be an end and never merely a means, it is morally obligatory that they are treated as such. Kant believed that any moral law motivated by the desire to fulfill some other interest would deny the Categorical Imperative, leading him to argue that the moral law must only arise from a rational will.
A rational being must always regard himself as giving laws either as member or as sovereign in a kingdom of ends which is rendered possible by the freedom of will.
Kant clearly takes himself to have established that rational agents such as ourselves must take the means to our ends, since this is analytic of rational agency. But there is a chasm between this analytic claim and the supposed synthetic conclusion that rational agency also requires conforming to a further, non-desire based, principle of practical reason such as the CI.
Nevertheless, some see arguments in Groundwork II that establish just this. If this assumption is true, then if one can on independent grounds prove that there is something which is an end in itself, one will have an argument for a categorical imperative.
One such strategy, favored by Korsgaard and Wood relies on the apparent argument Kant gives that humanity is an end in itself. Guyer, by contrast, sees an argument for freedom as an end in itself Guyer Both strategies have faced textual and philosophical hurdles. The core idea is that Kant believed that all moral theories prior to his own went astray because they portrayed fundamental moral principles as appealing to the existing interests of those bound by them.
This in turn apparently implies that our wills are necessarily aimed at what is rational and reasonable. To will something, on this picture, is to govern oneself in accordance with reason. Often, however, we fail to effectively so govern ourselves because we are imperfect rational beings who are caused to act by our non—rational desires and inclinations. The result, at least on one version of this interpretation Wolff , is that we either act rationally and reasonably and so autonomously or we are merely caused to behave in certain ways by non—rational forces acting on us and so heteronomously.
This is, however, an implausible view. It implies that all irrational acts, and hence all immoral acts, are not willed and therefore not free. However, several prominent commentators nonetheless think that there is some truth in it Engstrom ; Reath ; Korsgaard , , In particular, when we act immorally, we are either weak—willed or we are misusing our practical reason by willing badly.
We do not have the capacity to aim to act on an immoral maxim because the will is identified with practical reason, so when we will to perform an immoral act, we implicitly but mistakenly take our underlying policy to be required by reason.
Our choice is nonetheless free and attributable to us because our will was involved in leading us to take the act to be rational and reasonable. It remains to be seen whether, on this complicated interpretation of Kant, it sufficiently allows for the possibility that one can knowingly and willingly do wrong if the will is practical reason and practical reason is, in part, the moral law. Thus, rather than treating admirable character traits as more basic than the notions of right and wrong conduct, Kant takes virtues to be explicable only in terms of a prior account of moral or dutiful behavior.
He does not try to make out what shape a good character has and then draw conclusions about how we ought to act on that basis.
He sets out the principles of moral conduct based on his philosophical account of rational agency, and then on that basis defines virtue as a kind of strength and resolve to act on those principles despite temptations to the contrary. Moreover, the disposition is to overcome obstacles to moral behavior that Kant thought were ineradicable features of human nature. Thus, virtue appears to be much more like what Aristotle would have thought of as a lesser trait, viz.
Third, in viewing virtue as a trait grounded in moral principles, and vice as principled transgression of moral law, Kant thought of himself as thoroughly rejecting what he took to be the Aristotelian view that virtue is a mean between two vices. The Aristotelian view, he claimed, assumes that virtue typically differs from vice only in terms of degree rather than in terms of the different principles each involves MM , They differ in that the prodigal person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of enjoyment, while the avaricious person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of possessing them.
Fourth, in classical views the distinction between moral and non-moral virtues is not particularly significant. A virtue is some sort of excellence of the soul, but one finds classical theorists treating wit and friendliness alongside courage and justice. Since Kant holds moral virtue to be a trait grounded in moral principle, the boundary between non-moral and moral virtues could not be more sharp.
Even so, Kant shows a remarkable interest in non-moral virtues; indeed, much of Anthropology is given over to discussing the nature and sources of a variety of character traits, both moral and non-moral.
Fifth, virtue cannot be a trait of divine beings, if there are such, since it is the power to overcome obstacles that would not be present in them. This is not to say that to be virtuous is to be the victor in a constant and permanent war with ineradicable evil impulses or temptations. Should all of our desires and interests be trained ever so carefully to comport with what morality actually requires of us, this would not change in the least the fact that morality is still duty for us.
For should this come to pass, it would not change the fact that each and every desire and interest could have run contrary to the moral law. And it is the fact that they can conflict with moral law, not the fact that they actually do conflict with it, that makes duty a constraint, and hence is virtue essentially a trait concerned with constraint.
For instance, he holds that the lack of virtue is compatible with possessing a good will G 6: That one acts from duty, even repeatedly and reliably can thus be quite compatible with an absence of the moral strength to overcome contrary interests and desires. Someone with a good will, who is genuinely committed to duty for its own sake, might simply fail to encounter any significant temptation that would reveal the lack of strength to follow through with that commitment.
Among the virtues Kant discusses are those of self-respect, honesty, thrift, self-improvement, beneficence, gratitude, sociability, and forgiveness. Kant also distinguishes vice, which is a steadfast commitment to immorality, from particular vices, which involve refusing to adopt specific moral ends or committing to act against those ends.
Although Kant gives several examples in the Groundwork that illustrate this principle, he goes on to describe in later writings, especially in The Metaphysics of Morals , a complicated normative ethical theory for interpreting and applying the CI to human persons in the natural world. His framework includes various levels, distinctions and application procedures.
Kant, in particular, describes two subsidiary principles that are supposed to capture different aspects of the CI. These principles, in turn, justify more specific duties of right and of ethics and virtue. For example, Kant claims that the duty not to steal the property of another person is narrow and perfect because it precisely defines a kind of act that is forbidden.
The duty of beneficence, on the other hand, is characterized as wide and imperfect because it does not specify exactly how much assistance we must provide to others. Even with a system of moral duties in place, Kant admits that judgment is often required to determine how these duties apply to particular circumstances. It denies, in other words, the central claim of teleological moral views. For instance, act consequentialism is one sort of teleological theory. It asserts that the right action is that action of all the alternatives available to the agent that has the best overall outcome.
Here, the goodness of the outcome determines the rightness of an action. Another sort of teleological theory might focus instead on character traits. In this case, it is the goodness of the character of the person who does or would perform it that determines the rightness of an action.
In both cases, as it were, the source or ground of rightness is goodness. Rightness, on the standard reading of Kant, is not grounded in the value of outcomes or character. There are several reasons why readers have thought that Kant denies the teleological thesis.
First, he makes a plethora of statements about outcomes and character traits that appear to imply an outright rejection of both forms of teleology. This appears to say that moral rightness is not a function of the value of intended or actual outcomes.
These certainly appear to be the words of someone who rejects the idea that what makes actions right is primarily their relationship to what good may come of those actions, someone who rejects outright the act consequentialist form of teleology. Moreover, Kant begins the Groundwork by noting that character traits such as the traditional virtues of courage, resolution, moderation, self-control, or a sympathetic cast of mind possess no unconditional moral worth, G —94, — If the moral rightness of an action is grounded in the value of the character traits of the person who performs or would perform it then it seems Kant thinks that it would be grounded in something of only conditional value.
This certainly would not comport well with the virtue ethics form of teleology. Perhaps the first philosopher to suggest a teleological reading of Kant was John Stuart Mill. In the first chapter of his Utilitarianism , Mill implies that the Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative could only sensibly be interpreted as a test of the consequences of universal adoption of a maxim.
And because they are universal, Hare argued, they forbid making exceptions. Indeed, Cummiskey argues that they must be: Respect for the value of humanity entails treating the interests of each as counting for one and one only, and hence for always acting to produce the best overall outcome. That, she argues, would imply that there would be no reason to conform to them.
Instead, Kant thought the principles of rationality taken together constitute rational agency, and rational agency so constituted itself functions as a value that justifies moral action , Guyer argues that autonomy itself is the value grounding moral requirements. And Wood argues that humanity itself is the grounding value for Kant. While the second Critique claims that good things owe their value to being the objects of the choices of rational agents, they could not, in his view, acquire any value at all if the source of that value, rational agency, itself had no value , ; see also —8.
If their value thereby becomes the source of the rightness of our actions — say, our actions are right if and because they treat that self-standing value in various ways — then her reading too is teleological. On the latter view, moral demands gain their authority simply because a rational will, insofar as you are rational, must will them.
On the former view, by contrast, a rationale is at hand: because your will is, insofar as it is rational, good. Proponents of this former reading are, however, then left with the burden of explaining how it could be the autonomy of the will alone that explains the authority of morality.
One might have thought that this question is quite easy to settle. At the basis of morality, Kant argued, is the Categorical Imperative, and imperatives are not truth apt. But, in fact, the question is not at all easy. Thus while at the foundation of morality there would be an imperative which is not truth apt, particular moral judgments themselves would describe what that imperative rules out and so would themselves be truth apt.
Philosophers such as R. Objectivity, according to Hare, is to be understood as universality, and the Categorical Imperative prescribes universally. A second issue that has received considerable attention is whether Kant is a metaethical constructivist or realist. Constructivism in metaethics is the view that moral truths are, or are determined by, the outcomes of actual or hypothetical procedures of deliberation or choice.
Autonomy, in this sense, means that such agents are both authors and subjects of the moral law and, as such, are not bound by any external requirements that may exist outside of our wills. Instead, we are only subject to moral requirements that we impose on ourselves through the operation of our own reason independently of our natural desires and inclinations. The common error of previous ethical theories, including sentimentalism, egoism and rationalism, is that they failed to recognize that morality presupposes that we have autonomy of the will.
On these interpretations, Kant is a skeptic about arbitrary authorities, such as God, natural feelings, intrinsic values or primitive reasons that exist independently of us. Only reason itself has genuine authority over us, so we must exercise our shared powers of reasoned deliberation, thought and judgment, guided by the Categorical Imperative as the most basic internal norm of reason, to construct more specific moral requirements. Kantians in this camp, however, disagree about how this rational procedure should be characterized.
Other commentators interpret Kant as a robust moral realist Ameriks ; Wood ; Langton ; Kain The moral law then specifies how we should regard and treat agents who have this special status. Autonomy of the will, on this view, is a way of considering moral principles that are grounded in the objective value of rational nature and whose authority is thus independent of the exercise of our wills or rational capacities.
Some interpreters of Kant, most notably Korsgaard , seem to affirm a kind of quietism about metaethics by rejecting many of the assumptions that contemporary metaethical debates rest on. For example, some of these philosophers seem not to want to assert that moral facts and properties just are the outcomes of deliberative procedures. Rather, they seem more eager to reject talk of facts and properties as unnecessary, once a wholly acceptable and defensible procedure is in place for deliberation.
Once we are more sensitive to the ethical concerns that really matter to us as rational agents, we will find that many of the questions that animate metaethicists turn out to be non-questions or of only minor importance.
Most translations include volume and page numbers to this standard Academy edition. Citations in this article do so as well. The following volumes of that series are especially relevant to his moral theory:. There have been several comprehensive commentaries on the Groundwork that have been published recently, some of which also include new English translations.
Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy 2. Good Will, Moral Worth and Duty 3. Duty and Respect for Moral Law 4. Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives 5. There are no consequences that can justify rape. There are no consequences that can legitimate the torture of an innocent child. It is not the results of actions that are morally valuable, then -- it is the action itself that we should evaluate. The only thing that is good without qualification is the good will, Kant says.
All other candidates for an intrinsic good have problems, Kant argues. Courage, health, and wealth can all be used for bad purposes, Kant argues, and therefore cannot be intrinsically good. Not even happiness is not intrinsically good because even being worthy of happiness, Kant says, requires that one possess a good will. Keep in mind that what is said below has to do with how one evaluates people, not actions.
A person's actions are right or wrong, a person is morally worthy or lacks moral worth i. A person's actions determine her moral worth, but there is more to this than merely seeing if the actions are right or wrong.
By "motivation" I mean what caused you to do the action i. Kant argues that one can have moral worth i. In other words, if a person's emotions or desires cause them to do something, then that action cannot give them moral worth.
This may sound odd, but there is good reason to agree with Kant. I look around for what would be the most fun to do with it: buy a yacht, travel in first class around the world, get that knee operation, etc.. I decide that what would be really fun is to give the money to charity and to enjoy that special feeling you get from making people happy, so I give all my lottery money away. According to Kant, I am not a morally worthy person because I did this, after all I just did whatever I thought would be the most fun and there is nothing admirable about such a selfish pursuit.
It was just lucky for those charities that I thought giving away money was fun. Moral worth only comes when you do something because you know that it is your duty and you would do it regardless of whether you liked it. Imagine two people out together drinking at a bar late one night, and each of them decides to drive home very drunk. They drive in different directions through the middle of nowhere. One of them encounters no one on the road, and so gets home without incident regardless of totally reckless driving.
The other drunk is not so lucky and encounters someone walking at night, and kills the pedestrian with the car. Kant would argue that based on these actions both drunks are equally bad, and the fact that one person got lucky does not make them any better than the other drunk. After all, they both made the same choices, and nothing within either one's control had anything to do with the difference in their actions.
The same reasoning applies to people who act for the right reasons. If both people act for the right reasons, then both are morally worthy, even if the actions of one of them happen to lead to bad consequences by bad luck. Imagine that he gives to a charity and he intends to save hundreds of starving children in a remote village. The food arrives in the village but a group of rebels finds out that they have food, and they come to steal the food and end up killing all the children in the village and the adults too.
The intended consequence of feeding starving children was good, and the actual consequences were bad. Kant is not saying that we should look at the intended consequences in order to make a moral evaluation.
Kant is claiming that regardless of intended or actual consequences, moral worth is properly assessed by looking at the motivation of the action, which may be selfish even if the intended consequences are good.
One might think Kant is claiming that if one of my intentions is to make myself happy, that my action is not worthy. This is a mistake.
The consequence of making myself happy is a good consequence, even according to Kant. Kant clearly thinks that people being happy is a good thing. There is nothing wrong with doing something with an intended consequence of making yourself happy, that is not selfishness.
You can get moral worth doing things that you enjoy, but the reason you are doing them cannot be that you enjoy them, the reason must be that they are required by duty. Also, there is a tendency to think that Kant says it is always wrong to do something that just causes your own happiness, like buying an ice cream cone. This is not the case. Kant thinks that you ought to do things to make yourself happy as long as you make sure that they are not immoral i.
Getting ice cream is not immoral, and so you can go ahead and do it. Doing it will not make you a morally worthy person, but it won't make you a bad person either. Many actions which are permissible but not required by duty are neutral in this way.
It is fine if they enjoy doing it, but it must be the case that they would do it even if they did not enjoy it. The overall theme is that to be a good person you must be good for goodness sake. His argument for this is summarized by James Rachels as follows:. After all, it is not as though people would stop believing each other simply because it is known that people lie when doing so will save lives.
For one thing, that situation rarely comes up—people could still be telling the truth almost all of the time. Even the taking of human life could be justified under certain circumstances.
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