Transcript Good Will, Duty, and the Categorical Imperative”

Jacques Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784
“Good Will, Duty, and the
Categorical Imperative”
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
KANT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY
• Modern philosophy begins with René Descartes (15961650).
• However, Kant is regarded by many as the greatest of all
the modern philosophers.
• Indeed, with Plato and Aristotle, Kant is often considered
to be one of the three greatest philosophers.
• Kant made great contributions in epistemology,
metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics.
• The Critique of Pure Reason widely regarded as a
masterpiece, and the greatest single work in philosophy
since the Greeks, perhaps since Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
MAN, NATURE, AND RATIONALITY
• Kant notes that “everything in nature works according to
laws.” However, humans differ from other parts of
nature in that humans alone can according to principles.
• Thus, Kant recognizes the rationality of human beings.
• Humans are rational in having a “conception of laws,” or
principles.
• Our rationality enables us to understand the correctness
of moral laws such as “keep your promises,” and to know
the difference between right and wrong.
FREE AGENCY
• Human beings are also free agents, that is, we have
free will, or can freely choose between options,
including moral options. That is, we can freely choose
to do right or wrong.
• Because of our rationality, we can understand the
difference between right and wrong. And, because of
our rationality, we can understand moral laws which it
is our duty to accept as binding.
• Our freedom to choose means then that we are capable
of freely acting on this knowledge. That is we can
freely choose to do what is proper.
REASON AND AGENCY
• Knowing how to act morally requires reason. Thus we
must be able to deduce and understand the principles of
correct moral behavior.
• Having understood what is the right thing to do, we then
act in a morally correct way when we freely choose to act
according to the moral law which reason has recognized to
be correct.
• Kant calls our ability to act according to principles, or our
capacity to use our free will to do the right thing, practical
reason.
• Thus, for Kant, the will puts to use or practice the
principles of reason insofar as they concern moral
behavior.
RATIONALITY AND DESIRE
• Kant recognizes that people are not only rational
agents but we also have desires and appetites.
• However, as a rational agent, a person can choose to
do what is right in spite of the influence of desires
and appetites.
• When desires and appetites, or what Kant calls
“subjective conditions,” would lead a person not to
do the morally correct thing, or when morality and
desire conflict, the moral person acts according to
reason to do the right thing, in spite of the influences
of their desires and appetites.
MORAL WORTH
• For Kant, a person of moral worth does the right thing, and
does so in spite of the influence of desire and appetite which
may lead her to do the wrong thing.
• And, for Kant, moral worth is the most important attribute
which a person can have.
• Moral worth is more important and more admirable than
such “talents of the mind” as “intelligence, wit, and
judgment” and is more important than such “qualities of
temperament” as “courage, resolution, and perseverance.”
• For Kant, “these gifts of nature” - intelligence, courage, and
so forth - may also become bad and mischievous if the will
which is to make use of them is not good.”
GOOD WILL I
• As seen, Kant recognizes that such things as intelligence
and talent are good and valuable, but he thinks that moral
worth has absolute value, and is more important than
anything else which we might admire in a person.
• We have also seen that, for Kant, we are obligated by
reason to follow objective moral laws even though we
may not do so because of the influence of subjective
conditions, or desires and appetites, on the will.
• A person’s will to do the right thing, the thing which
reason can identify as the morally correct thing to do, is a
good will, and one which does not is not thoroughly good.
GOOD WILL II
• A person of moral worth is a person of good will in
freely choosing to do the morally correct thing
whether or not she is under the influence of desire to
do otherwise.
• And Kant says that “Nothing can possibly be
conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be
called good without qualification, except a Good
Will.”
• Again, things like intelligence, talent, courage, and
diligence are good, but if they are not backed by good
character or a good will, then they can be put to bad
use by a bad person. For instance, Hitler.
GOOD WILL III
• A good will is necessary to make sure that what Kant calls
“gifts of fortune,” such as wealth and power, do not lead us
astray as moral beings.
• Even things which are thought to be “good in many respects,”
such as “self-control and calm deliberation,” “have no intrinsic
unconditional value, but always presuppose a good will.”
• Not only are such things not absolutely good, as a good will is,
but they can be put to bad use if not backed by a good will.
Thus we may admire qualities such as self-control and calm
deliberation, but, if not backed by a good will they “may
become extremely bad.” For instance, Kant says that “the
coolness of a villain makes him far more dangerous” [than he
would have been had he lacked the self-control and calm
deliberation that coolness implies].
GOOD WILL IV
• For Kant, a good will is not good because of what
it brings about or helps to bring about, but because
it is good in itself.
• A good will, considered by itself as it is in itself, is
much more admirable than anything which it
brings about.
• For instance, the good will which brings about
happiness is much more deserving of respect than
is the happiness which it produces.
GOOD WILL V
• Even if a good will accomplishes nothing, it
is still to be admired as something which
“has its whole value in itself.”
• So whether a good will is useful in
producing results or not, it is still of the
utmost goodness in itself.
• The value of a good will then lies entirely in
itself and not in what it produces.
GOOD WILL VI
• For Kant, “a good will is good not because of
what it performs or effects, but is good in itself.”
• Because the value of a good will lies entirely
within itself, it is still good whether it results in
anything which is either a good or a bad effect of
it.
• The good will then “has its whole value in itself,”
and “its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add
to nor take away anything from this value.”
MORALITY AND CONSEQUENCES I
• Kant says that “the moral worth of an action does not lie in the
effect expected from it, nor in any principle of action which
requires to borrow its motive from this expected effect.”
• Thus, unlike any consequentialist theory, Kant says that it is
incorrect to look for the moral worth of an action in its effects.
• The reason for this is that expected effects of actions, such as
improving one’s own condition, as in egoism, or increasing the
happiness of everyone likely to be effected by the action, as in
utilitarianism, Kant says “could have been brought about by
other causes.”
• And, if that were the case, then “there would have been no
need of the will of a rational being.”
MORALITY AND CONSEQUENCES II
• Recall that, for Kant, it is in this will “alone that the
supreme and unconditional good can be found.”
• And if that is where the supreme and unconditional good is
to be found, then it is not to be found in the consequences of
an action, whether those consequences mean a better life for
oneself, as in egoism, or in a better life for everyone
affected by the action, as in utilitarianism.
• To that end, Kant says: “The pre-eminent good which we
call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the
conception of law in itself, which certainly is possible only
in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the
expected effect, determines the will.” (His italics.)
MORALITY AND CONSEQUENCES III
• Thus, for Kant, the moral person does what is right because
it is right, and does not do right because he or she is
considering the likely effects of doing right for himself or
for anyone likely to be effected by the action.
• For Kant, the goodness of a good will “is a good which is
already present in the person who acts accordingly [that is, a
person who acts according to moral law], and we have not
to wait for it to appear first in the result.”
• The goodness of an act is not then judged by its
consequences, as in a consequentialist theory, but is due to a
good will, or willing to do the right thing because it is the
right thing to do.
MORAL MOTIVES
• For Kant it is the moral person who is to be
respected and revered. However, you are not an
intrinsically moral person if, although you do the
right thing, you do so for the wrong reason.
• For instance, you may keep a promise, not ought of
knowing that it is the right thing to do, and acting on
that knowledge, but because you perceive it to be to
your benefit to do so.
• A moral person is motivated to do the right thing
because he recognizes that it is the right thing to do,
and so acts out of principle.
MORALITY IS UNIVERSAL
• According to Kant, you don’t act correctly
for a subjective reason, such as pleasure or
happiness, if you are a moral person.
Rather, you act out of principle.
• This means recognizing an objective right
which applies to everyone.
• What is morally right for one person is
morally right for everyone, which is what is
meant by saying that morality is universal.
DUTY I
• That morality is universal and objective, rather
than local, historical, and subjective, means that
every rational agent has an obligation to do what
is right.
• Thus it is your duty to do what is morally right as
an objective matter.
• Kant’s ethics is called deontological. The word
deontology comes from the Greek words deon for
duty and logos for science. Thus deontology
would be the science of duty.
DUTY II
• A deontological theory of ethics stresses a person’s
duty to do the morally correct thing regardless of
consequences.
• For deontological ethics, some acts are morally
obligatory whether their consequences are good or
bad for human beings.
• Because of lack of consideration of consequences, a
deontological theory is nonconsequentialist.
• The deontologist will typically hold that his moral
standards are higher than those of the
consequentialist.
IMPERATIVES
• An imperative is a command that I act in a certain
fashion.
• Kant talks of two kinds of imperative, or two
kinds of “command (of reason),” namely,
hypothetical or categorical.
• A hypothetical imperative concerns an action
which “is good only as a means to something
else.” (His italics.) A categorical imperative
concerns an action which “is conceived of as good
in itself.” (His italics.)
HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVE I
• A hypothetical imperative is conditional.
• That is, it depends on certain things, and
concerns what needs to be done in order to
attain an objective.
• An imperative (a command of reason to act
in a certain way) is hypothetical when it
concerns an action which is good only as a
means to something else.
HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVE II
• For instance, if you want to begin collecting art, then
your ability to collect good art will be dependent or
conditional on your ability to recognize good art.
• It is therefore imperative that you learn something about
art so that you can tell the good from the bad. And the
hypothetical command of reason in this case would be:
“If you want to build a good collection of art (the
hypothetical) then learn about art (the imperative).
• Thus learning about art is good, but it is hypothetical
because it is a means to something else, namely acquiring
a good collection.
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE I
• Kant says that “There is but one categorical imperative,
namely this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at
the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
(His italics.)
• (A maxim is a principle of conduct, such as ‘keep your
promises.’)
• Kant also puts the categorical imperative this way: “Act as
if the maxim of thy action were to become a universal law
of nature.” (His italics.)
• He further states the categorical imperative when he says
“I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will
that my maxim should become a universal law.” (His
italics.)
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE II
• A categorical imperative is unconditional ‘categorical’ means absolute, unqualified, or
unconditional.
• Kant’s categorical imperative is objectively
necessary.
• It concerns the necessity of a correct moral
action itself without reference to any
consequence of the action.
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE III
• According to Kant, all moral laws, or what he
calls “imperatives of duty,” such as: keep your
promises, tell the truth, and repay your debts, “can
be deduced from this one imperative” [namely, the
categorical imperative ‘act only on that maxim
whereby you can will that it should become a
universal law’].
• Kant thinks that the categorical imperative is a
general law to which particular moral laws, such
as those just cited, must conform.
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IV
• We have seen that Kant thinks that the goodness of an act does
not lie in its effects, but in the conception of the moral law
according to which all rational agents should act, and so Kant is
not a utilitarian or consequentialist.
• In addition, Kant says that the conception of the correct moral
law will and must “determine the will,” or tell us what is the
correct moral action, and he says that this correct moral law
pertains to everyone.
• If we look to moral law for correct moral behavior, and not to
the effects of actions, then we must ask what kind of law it is to
which we are to look for morality.
• The answer, for Kant, is the categorical imperative, the general
law from which, and according to which particular moral laws
can be tested.
TESTING MORAL LAWS I
• To test a moral act one can ask: “What would
happen if everyone did this?” Or, “Would it be
okay for anyone to do this in the same or similar
circumstances?” (Cf. Thomas Nagel.)
• If what I am about to do is morally correct then,
for Kant, it would be morally correct for everyone
to do the same thing in the same circumstances.
• If an action is morally correct then it is
universalizable, that is, it is good for everyone,
everywhere, everywhen.
TESTING MORAL LAWS II
• For Kant, a particular moral principle can be tested by
asking if a rule pertaining to behavior which goes
against the principle can be universalized.
• And he says: “If not, then it must be rejected . . .
because it cannot enter as a principle into a possible
universal legislation” [cannot be a moral law
applicable to everyone.]
• Thus a test of a maxim or moral law such as ‘keep
your promises’ is to ask if a principle pertaining to
conduct which would break the law, such as ‘it is okay
to make a promise which you don’t intend to keep,’
could be universalized.
TEST 1: MAKING FALSE PROMISES I
• Could the rule ‘it is okay to break a promise,’ or ‘it is
okay to make a false promise’ be universalized?
• If so, that is, if it would be okay for everyone to make
promises which they don’t intend to keep, then
making false promises would fit the categorical
imperative and so would be morally acceptable.
• But can making false promises be universalized? To
answer this we must ask what would happen, or what
the consequences would be, of everyone making
promises which they do not intend to keep.
TEST 1: MAKING FALSE PROMISES II
• Kant’s answer is that promises would cease to mean
anything. Thus we could never count on the promise
of another, or could never be sure that a promise was
serious and will be kept if ‘it is okay to make a false
promise’ is a moral principle.
• Accordingly, the maxim ‘it is okay to make a false
promise,’ “as soon as it should be made a universal
law, would necessarily destroy itself.”
• Notice that there is no hypothetical which precedes the
statement of the moral law ‘keep your promises,’ such
as “if you want to be well-liked” or “if you want to
have a good reputation” then keep your promises.
PRUDENCE AND DUTY I
• If we looked at promise keeping as a hypothetical
imperative which says: ‘If you want to be liked, then keep
your promises,’ then it might be thought to be prudent to
keep your promises given that objective.
• Hypothetical imperatives, such as, ‘if you want a good
grade, then study hard,’ are said to be prudential.
• However, since a law which says that it is okay to break
promises cannot be universalized, keeping promises is
unconditional, and, as such, is something which we have
a duty to do.
• The categorical imperative is moral then rather than
prudential.
PRUDENCE AND DUTY II
• Kant grants that it may in some cases be prudent
for a person to break a promise, but the moral
question is whether it can ever be right?
• Whether or not something is prudent depends on
its consequences. And Kant does not base
morality on the consequences of acts, at least not
after the consequences of considering the possible
universalization of a law, such as making false
promises, which would test a law such as ‘keep
your promises,’ has been considered and rejected.
PRUDENCE AND DUTY III
• In knowing how to behave morally, I do not need
to look to the world and what the possible
consequences of my action might be, I only need
to look at whether or not a moral principle, such as
‘tell the truth,’ is consistent with the categorical
imperative, that is whether or not the principle can
be universalized, or whether or not I can will that
everyone ought to tell the truth.
• I only need to ask if the action which I am
considering can be willed to be a universal law,
and if it can’t be then it has to be rejected.
PRUDENCE AND DUTY IV
• Thus if the act which I am considering is making a
false promise I have to ask whether or not making
false promises can be universalized.
• Since they cannot, because promises would then no
longer be believable, the maxim of making false
promises must be rejected.
• For Kant, “the necessity of acting from pure respect
for the practical [moral] law is what constitutes duty,
to which every other motive must give place, because
it is the condition of a will being good in itself, and
the worth of such a will is above everything.” (His
italics.)
TEST 2: SUICIDE I
Old Man in Sorrow
(On the Threshold of Eternity)
Vincent Van Gogh, 1890
• Is suicide okay for a
depressed person if he or
she reasons as follows?
• a) To stay alive would be
far less good for me than
bad. b) I love myself. c)
Because I love myself I do
not want to see myself
suffer. d) Therefore, I
ought to commit suicide to
end my suffering.
TEST 2: SUICIDE II
• For Kant, the crucial thing for the morality of suicide is
whether or not this reasoning to the correctness of suicide
to end suffering from self-love “can become a universal
law of nature.”
• And he thinks that it cannot since, according to Kant, to
commit suicide out of self-love is contradictory. It is
contradictory because self-love is the very thing which
motivates us to improve our lives.
• However, the removal of life is not improvement of life,
and so self-love which provided these contradictory
options cannot be made “a universal law of nature, and
consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the
supreme principle of all duty.”
TEST 3: WASTING YOUR TALENT I
• What if one is financially independent and is also
exceptionally talented? What then does she owe,
if anything to her talent? Is it okay for her “to
indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in
enlarging and improving his happy natural
capacities?”
• Kant notes that it is possible for people - even an
entire culture - to neglect their talents in fact, to
devote their lives to idle amusement. But the
moral question is, is it proper?
TEST 3: WASTING YOUR TALENT II
• Kant says that it is not, since it is not possible to will that
the neglect of talent should become a universal law.
• He cannot will that we ought to neglect our talents since
it is by means of our talents that we develop and
improve our lives, and this is what a rational being aims
for.
• That is, a rational being will necessarily will that his
abilities be developed since they are useful to him, and
serve any number of purposes. Accordingly, he cannot
at the same time will that they be neglected without
contradicting himself.
TEST 4: CONCERN FOR OTHERS I
• Kant says that the world might in fact be
composed of people who mind their own business
and take no interest in the lives of others.
• However, he says that it is impossible to will this
lack of concern for others.
• This is because there may be cases in which we
need the help and consideration of others.
TEST 4: CONCERN FOR OTHERS II
• But if we will it to be a universal law that no one
should help anyone else, then we would thereby
deprive ourselves of the very assistance which we
require.
• Thus in both willing it that no one should help
anyone else, while desiring it ourselves when we
are in need, we contradict ourselves.
• Accordingly, it would be impossible to will a lack
of concern for others to “have the universal
validity of a law of nature.”
PRUDENCE AND DUTY V
• Kant takes the above test cases to show “that if duty is a
conception which is to have any import and real legislative
authority for our actions, it can only be expressed in
categorical, and not at all in hypothetical imperatives.”
• Thus one does not say, if you want to be well-liked, then help
others in need, which is a hypothetical imperative which
might be thought prudent for a person to follow. Instead, we
see that we ought to help others since a principle which
maintains that we ought not to help others in need cannot be
consistently universalized.
• Helping others then fits the categorical imperative which
pertains to the universalization of correct moral actions.
PERSONS AND THINGS
• According to Kant, persons are rational agents
who are ends in themselves.
• Thus Kant says that “man and generally any
rational being exists as and end in himself, not
merely as a means to be arbitrarily used . . . ”
• For Kant, rational beings are persons and nonrational beings are things.
• Persons are ends in themselves and have absolute
value, whereas things are means to an end and
only have relative value as means to an end.
PERSONS AND THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE I
• Because persons are rational, they are ends in
themselves for Kant, and not merely things which
have relative value because they are only means to
something else.
• The status of persons as rational agents who are
ends in themselves gives rise to a second way of
stating the categorical imperative: “So act as to
treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in
that of any other, in every case as an end withal,
never as means only.”
PERSONS AND THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE II
• Although persons can sometimes be used as means to an
end - as you use a teacher as a means to the end of getting
an education - persons are never to be used merely or only
as means.
• Thus something like slavery is morally reprehensible since
you are treating a slave as a thing and not as a person, you
are using a slave as a machine or an instrument of cheap
labor and not recognizing his or her essential humanity.
• All rational beings are subject to the same universal moral
laws which conform to the categorical imperative of acting
on a principle which you can will to become a universal
law.
THE KINGDOM OF ENDS I
• The community of rational beings who act under a
system of common moral laws Kant calls a
kingdom.
• Each person must recognize himself as an end in
himself and must recognize at the same time that
every other person too is an end in himself. This
is our duty according to Kant.
• Kant says that “all rational beings come under the
law that each of them must treat itself and all
others never merely as means, but in every case at
the same time as ends in themselves.”
THE KINGDOM OF ENDS II
• That is, every person is subject to the second form of the
categorical imperative, the law which says that it is our
duty to treat each person as an end in herself and never
as merely as a means to an end.
• Whenever a person is treated as a means to something
else, it must be recognized at the same time that she is
an end in herself.
• According to Kant, when we all recognize each other as
ends in themselves, and not merely as means to an end,
then our community, our kingdom, becomes a
community of persons treated as ends in themselves, or
what Kant calls a kingdom of ends.
KANT AND MORALITY I
• We know that, for Kant, respect for the moral law
is of the utmost importance.
• And Kant thinks that we should not consider the
value of our own pleasure or well-being or that of
others over the moral law.
• Contra at least act utilitarianism, in a contest
between increasing happiness and the moral law,
the moral law should win.
KANT AND MORALITY II
• Some people think that Kant’s devotion to the moral law can
have absurd consequences. For instance, he said that it is our
duty always to tell the truth. As such it would not seem
permissible ever to tell a lie, even to save the life of another
person!
• We have an obligation to tell the truth since lying cannot be
universalized, and we have an obligation to help others for
reasons seen above in the fourth test of the categorical
imperative. Might we not then need to lie to help another?
And doesn’t this raise a problem about conflicting duties?
• However this might be dealt with, since moral rules like telling
the truth, are both universally valid - for everyone, at every
time and at every place - and thus admit of no exceptions - for
Kant we have an absolute duty to follow them.
“Maria von Herbert’s Challenge to Kant”
Rae Langton (1961-)
MARIA’S PROBLEM I
• Maria von Herbert was a young woman who wrote to Kant
for advice.
• Maria was in love with a young man who also loved her
until she was honest with him about her having had a past
sexual relationship with another man.
• Her honesty about the past affair causes the man to lose his
love for her, and this in turn so depresses her that she
considers suicide.
• In fact, the only thing which prevents her from committing
suicide is Kant’s ethics, which prohibits suicide.
• The problem for Maria is that Kant’s philosophy does not
help her in dealing with the pain which she now
experiences.
Edvard Munch, Ashes, 1894
KANT’S RESPONSE TO MARIA I
• Perhaps the first telling thing here regarding Kant’s
role in this matter is that he asks a friend what he
should do, rather than being able to decide for
himself.
• Why would someone who has written works in moral
philosophy, which tell people what to do and what not
to do, need advice from someone else?
• Kant writes back to Maria and tells her that the man’s
indignation is justified, but that she was right to have
told the truth, since it is our duty to tell the truth.
KANT’S RESPONSE TO MARIA II
• Kant also tells her that, with time, the man will return to her if
his love for her was genuine and moral. If he does not return
than his affection was more physical than genuine.
• Kant also tells Maria that she must meet her misfortune with
composure, and says that “the value of life, insofar as it consists
of the enjoyment we get from people, is vastly overrated.”
• This quote perhaps is telling, since someone who gets little
enjoyment from others may have little sympathy or feeling for
others.
• And as Langton points out, Kant thinks that Maria deserves to
have lost her love, and that her suffering is appropriate
punishment for her immoral behavior.
MARIA’S PROBLEM II
• Maria writes again to Kant and says that she has lost
her interest in life, which is pointless, that her soul is
empty, that desire is gone, and she says that “each
day interests me only to the extent that it brings me
closer to death.”
• Maria also asks Kant to write back to her with
specific details about how to deal with her problems,
and also asks permission to visit him.
• For Langton, Maria’s life with its problems
“constitutes a profound challenge to Kant’s
philosophy”
MORAL MOTIVATION, DUTY, AND FEELING
• Langton reminds us that, in Kantian ethics, “an action has
moral worth when it is done for the sake of duty; it is not
enough that the action conforms with duty.”
• Thus, for Kant, if we do something moral we ought to do it out
of respect for duty, and not, for instance, due to sympathy.
• According to Kant, the person who treats persons out of duty to
the version of the categorical imperative which says to treat
persons as ends and never merely as means, and yet who has no
sympathy or feelings for others, is more moral than someone
who is sympathetic.
• Kant thinks that sympathy and feeling are burdensome. It is
reverence for the moral law which is to be respected, and it
must prevail over all human “inclinations and desires.”
PERSONS AND THINGS I
• Kant does not reply to Maria or honor her request
to visit him, but now considers her mentally
deranged and sends off her letters to an
acquaintance.
• Langton says that evil for Kant is “the reduction of
persons to things” (the second version of the
categorical imperative).
• Langton points out that, in the society in which
Maria lived, “women must perpetually walk a
tightrope between being treated as things and
treated as persons.”
Edvard Munch, Evening on Karl Johan Street, 1892
PERSONS AND THINGS II
• Langton points out that Maria would have had to contend
with “the sexual marketplace, where human beings are
viewed as having a price, and not a dignity, and where the
price of women is fixed in a particular way.” (Her italics.)
• Langton: “Women, as things, as items in the sexual
marketplace, have a market value that depends in part on
whether they have been used. Virgins fetch a higher price
than second hand goods.”
• Langton remarks that this is to treat a person as a thing, and
that such treatment must be evil according to Kant’s own
philosophy. And she says that this is a point which Kant
himself did not recognize, since he thought it was
appropriate that Maria suffer as she did for her confession.
QUESTIONS
• Is it different now?
• Do women feel that they are sometimes or
often treated as things, sex objects?
• Do men now look at women that way?
• How are women first looked at?
• Do women see themselves as the equals of
men?
• Do men see women as equals?
PERSONS AND THINGS III
• Kant’s ethics says that we ought always to tell the truth, and
so Maria had an obligation to tell the truth about her past.
However, Langton suggests that, by telling the truth, Maria
is transformed from a person into a thing, “used
merchandise,” because of the attitudes of the culture in
which she lived.
• Langton thinks that perhaps Maria can be permitted to lie
because the culture in which she lives is evil. It is evil
since it sees unmarried women who are not virgins as
things rather than persons.
• The idea is that, knowing that she will be treated like a
thing if she is honest, she may lie in order to protect her
status as a person.
PERSONS AND THINGS IV
• But further, Langton thinks that Maria may even
have a duty to lie, on Kantian theory, since it is
part of Kant’s ethics that each person has a duty of
self-esteem, an obligation to respect herself, and a
duty to recognize that people are not, like things,
for sale at any price.
• Maria’s duty not to treat herself as a thing, or to
allow herself to be treated as a thing, means that
she ought to lie to protect herself from such
treatment.
THE KINGDOM OF ENDS
• Remember that the Kantian Kingdom of Ends is the world in
which every person respects every other person, and where no
person is treated merely as a means rather than as an end, a
community of persons treated as ends in themselves.
• Langton says that Kant “thinks we should act as if the Kingdom
of Ends is with us now. He thinks that we should rely on God to
make it alright in the end.”
• This is the idea that the virtuous person who is not rewarded for
his or her morality on earth will be rewarded by God in the
afterlife.
• But Langton says that “God will not make it all right in the end.
And the Kingdom of Ends is not with us now.”
• And she adds that “Perhaps we should do what we can to bring it
about.”
PERSONS AND THINGS V
• Maria von Herbert never got to visit Kant
and she finally killed herself.
• In not treating her with the respect and
sympathy which she deserved, Langton
thinks that Kant ended up treating Maria as
a thing rather than as a person.
• See the study questions at the end of the
article.
“The Holocaust and Moral Philosophy”
Fred Sommers
TWO ETHICAL TRADITIONS
• The German tradition in ethics focuses on
reason. The focus of this rationalist tradition is
“on persons and our duties to them.”
• The British tradition in ethics focuses on feeling,
and on attitudes, thoughts, and judgements as they
relate to or are prompted by feeling. The focus for
the sentimentalist tradition is “on all beings that
can feel pain or pleasure and directly prohibits
cruelty to all sentient beings.”
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE
BRITISH TRADITION
• Sommers will argue that the tradition based on
feeling is superior to the tradition based on reason.
• For Sommers, the German tradition in ethics helped
in the German attitude towards the Jews in WWII.
This is because Jews were reclassified as
nonpersons by the Nazis, and only persons have
respect and moral protection in the German tradition
in ethics.
• For Sommers then, there must be something
defective in German moral philosophy.
MORAL PATIENTS, DOING
WRONG, AND WRONGING
• Sommers points out that there is a difference between
doing wrong and wronging. “You can do wrong by
damaging a tree, but you do not thereby wrong the tree.”
• Sommers quotes Geoffrey Warnock’s definition of a
moral patient as “Any being that a moral agent can
wrong.”
• Sommers: “According to the central (Kantian) tradition in
German moral thinking, the domain of moral patients
includes all and only moral agents, excluding many
nonrational beings as nonpersons or ‘things.’”
RATIONALITY AND MORAL
CONSIDERATION
• According to the German tradition in ethics, you
cannot wrong a nonrational being or thing.
Rather, in this tradition, we only owe respect to
persons.
• Kant says that “All moral philosophy rests wholly
on its pure part. When applied to man it does not
borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man
himself (anthropology), but gives laws to him as a
rational being.”
SENTIENCE AND THE
BRITISH TRADITION I
• Sommers contrasts the ethics of Kant with that of
Hume, and philosophers such as William
Shaftesbury, Adam Smith, and the utilitarians who
base moral obligation on compassion and feelings
of benevolence.
• For Hume and Bentham the moral community is
not based on an entity’s capacity to think, but its
capacity to feel and suffer.
SENTIENCE AND THE
BRITISH TRADITION II
• For these philosophers, and the British tradition in
ethics, “any sentient being can be wronged.”
• (Sentient - adj {L sentient-, sentiens, prp of sentire
to perceive, feel] (1632) 1: responsive to or
conscious of sense impressions 2: AWARE 3:
finely sensitive in perception or feeling. MerriamWebster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition.)
• Kant labeled this approach to ethics
“anthropological,” and found it “impure.”
SENTIENCE AND THE
MORAL COMMUNITY I
• What Sommers likes about the empirical approach of
Hume, which is based on feeling, is that “cruelty or
brutality to any sentient being is the very paradigm of
indecent, inadmissable behavior.”
• Sommers: “According to Kant, animals are not in the
domain of moral patients and we have no direct duty to
be kind to them. We do have an indirect duty to refrain
from acts of cruelty to animals because such behavior
could corrupt our character, and this could affect the way
we behave to rational beings to whom we do owe
respect.”
SENTIENCE AND THE
MORAL COMMUNITY II
• For Kant then, and the tradition which bases morality
on reason, the idea is not that we should respect
animals other than humans because of their capacity to
feel pain, or that mistreating animals is not wrong in
itself because animals then suffer, but because to
mistreat an animal could adversely affect the way we
treat each other.
• Thus the mistreatment of animals is not wrong
because animals are mistreated, but because the
mistreatment of animals could lead to the
mistreatment of humans.
SENTIENCE AND THE
MORAL COMMUNITY III
• The problem with the Kantian philosophy on this
issue, for Sommers, is that anyone who would not
be corrupted by mistreating animals would not be
doing wrong to mistreat them.
• For Sommers, this shows that there is something
wrong with the rationalist approach to ethics of
Kant and his followers.
THE NAZI TREATMENT OF THE JEWS I
• Recall how sympathy loses to a bad morality for Himmler
when, although he has sympathy for his victims, he
recognizes that it is his duty to eliminate them.
• Sommers recognizes that the treatment of the Jews by the
Nazis “would surely have horrified Kant,” but “a moral
philosophy which does not directly proscribe cruelty to
nonpersons” makes it possible to mistreat any being which
is not thought to qualify as a person.
• For the Nazis, Jews did not qualify as persons.
Accordingly, Sommers then points out that, “If Jews are
like insects, killing them is not a crime against humanity.”
THE NAZI TREATMENT OF THE JEWS II
• Of course, the Kantian could say here that killing
or mistreating Jews is wrong for the same reason
that mistreating dogs is wrong, because of its
effect on the people who mistreat them. That is,
by mistreating Jews, even though Jews are
nonpersons, we might lead us to mistreat persons.
• Sommers point though is that Kantian ethics
allows for the mistreatment of certain peoples
because they can be reclassified as nonpersons.
THE NAZI TREATMENT OF THE JEWS III
• Sommers does not think that this reclassification of
persons as nonpersons does not and will not happen in
any moral philosophy which is based on feeling rather
than on rationality.
• Thus he says that “A people steeped in the sentimentalist
moral philosophy [such as that of Locke, Hume, or Mill]
regards all sentient beings [those capable of feeling and
sensation, or pleasure and pain] as moral patients.” [as
deserving of moral consideration.] And “such a people
would view an openly cruel leader [like Hitler] as
unacceptably immoral.”
THE DANGER OF THE GERMAN RATIONAL TRADITION I
• For Sommers, any ethics which is based on the
notions of duty and respect rather than on kindness
and compassion is wrong and dangerous.
• The formal approach to ethics taken by Kant which is
based on duty to rational agents leaves other being
worthy of moral consideration outside of the moral
community.
• And it leaves open the possibility that certain beings
who we would normally consider to be part of the
moral community, such as Jews, would not be
considered persons, and therefore not morally
protected.
THE DANGER OF THE GERMAN RATIONAL TRADITION II
• Such an arbitrary drawing of moral boundaries cannot
happen for any ethics which is based on “benevolence
and human compassion.”
• And this is the case for the British tradition in ethics in
which the focus is on basic sentience and feeling.
• Sommers concludes by saying that “a moral theory
that does not absolutely, ‘directly,’ and foundationally
anathematize cruelty must be ruled out of court.”
• According to Sommers, the German rational tradition
does not do this, and so is not only inferior to the
British tradition, but is dangerous.