Philosophy 361 Ethics Darwall Fall 1996 KANT I TEXT ANALYSIS PROJECT ASSIGNMENT FOR 10/23: Kant, Groundwork, Chapter 1: first three paragraphs and bottom p. 64 through p. 66. *************************************************************** I From metaethics we move back to our study of systematic moral philosophies. We can begin to get into the second of our systematic ethical thinkers, Immanuel Kant, by recalling certain features of utilitarianism that will provide a contrasting foil. II One way of thinking of utilitarianism is that it treats morality as fundamentally instrumental. AU and RU do this in different ways. According to AU, the right act in any situation is always the best available instrument in promoting overall happiness. RU is a variation on the same theme. A society's moral code is itself an instrument, and an act is wrong if it is proscribed by this instrument. A. Utilitarianism's holding morality to be instrumental in these ways means that moral value is instrumental and derivative from nonmoral value. What is morally valuable depends entirely on what will promote nonmoral value. B. A related feature of utilitarianism is that it makes the moral value of the character and action of the moral agent dependent on features that are external to moral agency. Moral agency is itself instrumental. The way a moral agent should be, the kind of character she should have, depends on nothing intrinsic to moral agency. III It central to Kant's view that he disagrees with utilitarians on both of these points. According to Kant, morality is autonomous. By that he means both that: (i) moral value is nonderivative from and independent of nonmoral value, and (ii) morality does not confront the moral agent as a demand arising outside his agency. On the contrary, moral laws are laws of freedom; they are constraints that arise internally through the moral agent's self-regulating autonomous living. IV Kant (1724-1804) lived and wrote in the eighty years just preceding the life of J. S. Mill (1806-1873). He didn't begin to write his major philosophical works until reading Hume "awakened" him from his "dogmatic slumbers." Hume's skeptical treatment of the ideas of necessity and causation convinced him that he couldn't simply assume that these ideas had metaphysical reality. This gave Kant the impetus for the "critical philosophy"--a critique of reason in both its theoretical and practical uses. The Critique of Pure Reason appeared in 1781, and the two major works in the foundations of ethics soon followed: The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) and The Critique of Practical Reason (1787). Kant published his systematic normative work, The Metaphysics of Morals, ten years later (1797). The thread running through Kant's critical works is the desire to understand what basis we can have for ideas, like those of necessity and law, that seem so important, but also beyond anything we can experience. We take our experiences, for example, to be of a coherent order structured by causal laws. But, as Hume showed, we have no adequate empirical basis for the ideas of necessity and law. The senses simply provide us with sensations. Kant argued that the grounding for the ideas of necessity and law is not empirical (what he took Hume to have shown); they must have an a priori basis (their justification is independent of our actual experiences). These ideas are themselves condition of the very possibility of experience (but not sensation). V Kant's strategy in the Groundwork is similar. Here he asks, what conditions are necessary for the very possibility of morality, and for central moral notions, such as that of moral duty or obligation? Thus, in the Preface (vi) he writes that the need for a "pure moral philosophy completely cleansed of everything that can only be empirical . . . is already obvious from the common Idea of duty and from the laws of morality." The feature of this idea that Kant has in mind is what he refers to by saying that the idea of moral obligation "must carry with it absolute necessity if it is to be valid morally" By "absolute necessity" Kant means two different things. A. When we think a person morally ought to do something, we are committed to thinking the person falls under some obligation to which he is subject, not simply because of any "local" fact about him, but just as a person or rational being. B. Something which one must morally do is inescapable. Here, again, there two (perhaps related) aspects. 1. Unlike a merely "hypothetical imperative," where you ought to do something only as a means to some end you have, you cannot escape the force of the moral 'ought' or 'must' by simply renouncing some relevant end. E.g., it is not just that you ought to keep your promise, if you want others to keep theirs to you, or even, if you want other people to be happy. Rather, you ought to keep your promise, even if you were to renounce any of your present ends. 2. When you morally must do something, you must do it. No person can ever have adequate justification for not doing what he morally must do. If he does have adequate justification, then it cannot be the case that he morally must do it. VI Kant takes it that these features are implicit in the idea of moral obligation that confronts us and which we would all recognize if we were to reflect on our moral experience and thought. Suppose you think you ought not to tell a particular lie, that you must not, that it would be wrong to do so. Why do you think this is so? Do you think that this is true of you because you live in Ann Arbor? Or that you are an American? Or even that you are a human being? Kant thinks that, if you reflect carefully on what you think, you will see that you think none of these things. When you press yourself, you will see that you think that a person, any person, who was in circumstances like yours, ought not to lie. But what does 'a person' mean in this context. Kant thinks that you will think that it means nothing more specific than a moral agent or a rational being. Thus, Kant maintains that the very idea of moral duty already contains the idea of a law to which all rational agents are subject, and that you will agree that this is so when you reflect on what you yourself think. Moreover, Kant argues that, because the idea of moral duty includes this idea of a law or necessity to which all rational agents are subject, it cannot be grounded empirically. There can be no adequate justification for such an idea simply through our sensory or felt experience; the idea is a priori . VII But what does Kant mean by a rational being? We can begin to get an idea, and to grasp the role it plays in his moral philosophy, if we consider a passage in which he discusses the distinctive powers of rational beings: "Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being has the power to act in accordance with his idea of laws--that is, in accordance with principles--and only so far has he a will. Since reason is required in order to derive actions from laws, the will is nothing but practical reason." (Ak. 412) Now this suggests that Kant thinks that morality applies only to beings who can have a will, and that only beings who are capable of acting on principle can have that. What does he mean? Let us take an example. Suppose I drop an eraser on the table. Consider, first, the difference between the ways we might try to explain what I did and what the eraser "did". Notice that one way of explaining my action would be to give my (the agent's) reason for doing what I did. Let us assume that I dropped the eraser because I thought it would help me make a philosophical point. That it would help me in this way was a reason I had for doing it, a reason on which I acted, and my reason for acting. Now consider the eraser. It also acts, in a sense. But it surely doesn't act in the sense of having, itself, any reasons for doing what it does. There are reasons why it does what it does, most prominently gravity, but it doesn't do what it does for any reason. Erasers aren't agents. Moral 1: only a rational being can act for reasons--his reasons for acting. VIII Now note something more, if 'that it would help me make a philosophical point' was my reason for doing what I did, then presumably I thought, at least, that it (i.e., 'that it would . . . point') was a reason for me to drop the eraser. That is, I presumably thought that it was a consideration in favor of doing it. I don't mean that that thought must have occurred to me consciously, but nonetheless I presumably believed it. Now why did I think it was a reason for me to drop the eraser. Presumably I thought there were things about my situation, perhaps about my present interests and what would serve them, that made that a reason for me. But what if someone else, otherwise exactly like me, were to be in the very same kind of situation? Could I coherently believe that that same fact would not be a reason for that person to act similarly? It is hard to see how I could. Moral 2: When we act for reasons we commit ourselves to beliefs about what any person (rational agent) would have a reason to do; i.e., we commit ourselves to universal principles applying to all rational agents. IX Kant says that only a rational being can act in accordance with his idea of laws. We now have this: only a rational agent can act on a conception of universal principles by which he takes all rational subjects to be bound. We have from the Preface that the idea of moral duty is itself the idea of a law by which all rational agents are bound. These claims obviously raise the problem: Are there any such principles? Is there a law that binds all rational subjects as such? Kant will argue that there is, but that it has no metaphysical existence independently of autonomous practical reason. We realize the moral law through our autonomous, free agency.