Transcript Categorical imperatives - Philosophy 1510 All Sections

Archetypes of Wisdom
Douglas J. Soccio
Chapter 12: The Universalist: Immanuel
Kant
The Professor
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in
Königsberg in what was then known as East
Prussia (now Kaliningrad in the former Soviet
Union).
His parents were poor but devout members of a
fundamentalist Protestant sect known as Pietism,
living severe, puritanical lives.
At the age of sixteen, Kant entered the University
of Königsberg, and in 1755 he received the
equivalent of today’s doctoral degree. He became
a popular lecturer, and in 1770, the university
hired him as a professor of logic and mathematics.
The Solitary Writer
Kant’s life is noteworthy for not being noteworthy, never
traveling more than sixty miles from his birthplace, and
living with a regularity that people in his town could “set
their watches by”. But Kant was a prolific writer.
Observations on The Feeling of the Beautiful & Sublime
(1764)
The difficult but revolutionary The Critique of Pure
Reason (1781),
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785),
Critique of Practical Reason (1788),
Critique of Judgment (1790), and
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793).
A Scandal in Philosophy
Kant was one of the first thinkers to fully realize the
consequences of Hume’s relentless attack on the scope of
reason.
However, the seeds of what Kant referred to as a “scandal”
in philosophy were planted when Descartes doubted his
own existence and divided everything into two completely
distinct substances: minds and bodies.
Kant felt that something was drastically wrong if the two
major philosophical schools – rationalism and empiricism
– denied knowledge of cause and effect, the existence of
the external world, and rendered reason impotent in human
affairs while the science of the day clearly showed
otherwise.
Kant’s Copernican Revolution
In response to this “scandal,” Kant turned to an analysis
(or critique) of how knowledge is possible, of the
underlying structure of the mind
The theory he developed – transcendental idealism –
claims that knowledge is the result of the interaction
between the mind and sensation. Experience is shaped, or
structured, by special regulative ideas called categories.
What Kant was proposing challenged assumptions about
thought in the way Copernicus challenged assumptions
about the universe. Kant suggested that instead of mind
having to conform to what can be known, what can be
known must conform to the mind.
Phenomena & Noumena
According to Kant, our knowledge is formed by two
things: our actual experiences and the mind’s faculties of
judgment. This means that we cannot know reality as it is,
but only as it is organized by human reason.
Kant’s term for the world as we perceive it is phenomenal
reality.
Kant’s term for reality as it is independent of our
perceptions – what we commonly call “objective reality –
is noumenal reality.
Although we never experience pure reality, we can know
that our minds do not just invent the world. Our minds
impose order on the world, and that order is what Kant is
trying to make explicit.
Transcendental Ideas
Although we cannot directly experience noumena,
a special class of transcendental ideas bridges the
gap between things as we experience them and
things as they are in themselves.
Kant identified three transcendental ideas: self,
cosmos (totality), and God, which regulate and
synthesize experience on a grand scale.
These ideas create the unity and objectivity of
your experience of yourself as “you” (in a world
of sensation created by some highest intelligence).
Theoretical & Practical Reason
Although there is only one faculty of
understanding, Kant distinguishes two functions of
reason: one theoretical, the other practical.
Theoretical reasoning is confined to the world of
experience, and concludes that human beings, like
all phenomena, are governed by cause and effect
in the form of the inescapable laws of nature.
Practical reasoning enables us to move beyond the
phenomenal world to the moral dimension, helps
us to deal with the moral freedom provided by free
will, and produces religious feelings & intuitions.
The Moral Law Within
Kant notes that very few people consistently think of their
own moral judgments as mere matters of custom or taste.
Whether we actually live up to our moral judgments or not,
we think of them as concerned with how people ought to
behave.
Just as we cannot think or experience without assuming the
principle of cause and effect, Kant thought we cannot
function without a sense of duty. And our practical reason
imposes this notion of ought on us.
For Kant, morality is a function of reason, based on our
consciousness of necessary and universal laws. Since
necessary and universal laws must be a priori, they cannot
be discovered in actual behavior. The moral law is a
function of reason, a component of how we think.
The Good Will
It’s important to note that Kant conceives of the good will
as a component of rationality, the only thing which is
“good in itself”. Kant argues that “ought implies can” – by
which he means it must be possible for human beings to
live up to their moral obligations (since circumstances can
prevent us from doing the good we want to do).
Thus, Kant reasons, I must not be judged on the
consequences of what I actually do, but on my reasons.
Put another way, morality is a matter of motives. As Kant
himself said…
“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we should
make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy
of happiness.”
Inclinations
In Kantian terminology, decisions and actions
based on impulse or desire - or inclinations.
Inclinations are unreliable and inconstant, and so
not what morality should be based on.
Inclinations are not produced by reason. Animals
act from inclination, not from will.
In contrast to inclinations, acts of will reflect
autonomy, the capacity to choose clearly and
freely for ourselves, without “outside” coercion or
interference.
Moral Duty
“Duty,” Kant says, “is the necessity of
acting from respect for the moral law.”
Duty does not serve our desires and
preferences, but, rather, overpowers them.
My moral duty cannot be based on what I
want to do, what I like or don’t like, or
whether or not I care about the people
involved. That’s why it’s called “duty”.
The Categorical Imperative
Imperatives are forms of speech that command someone,
or tell them what to do. Kant distinguishes two types of
imperatives: hypothetical and categorical.
Hypothetical imperatives tell us what to do under specific,
variable conditions. They take the form: “If this, then do
that.”
Categorical imperatives tells us what to do in order for our
act to have moral worth. They take the form: “Do this.”
The categorical imperative is universally binding on all
rational creatures, and this alone can guide the good will
(which summons our powers to obey such an imperative).
The categorical imperative says, “Act as if the maxim of
thy action were to become a universal law of nature.” In
other words, we must act only according to principles we
think should apply to everyone.
The Kingdom of Ends
Kant believed that as conscious, rational creatures, we each
possess intrinsic worth, a special moral dignity that always
deserves respect. In other words, we are more than mere
objects to be used to further this or that end.
Kant formulates the categorical imperative around the
concept of dignity – sometimes referred to as the practical
imperative: “Act in such a way that you always treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of
another, never merely as a means but always at the same
time as an end.”
To describe the universe of all moral beings, Kant uses the
expression “kingdom of ends”, a kingdom whose creatures
possess intrinsic worth, in which everyone is an end in
himself or herself.
The Metaphysics of Morals
Taken together - the transcendental ideas (of self,
cosmos, and God); the division of reality into
phenomena and noumena; the moral law and duty
our good wills have to abide by it; the categorical
imperatives that ought to override our inclinations;
and the kingdom of ends to which we all
respectfully belong – all of these things constitute
what Kant thought of as the metaphysics of
morals, the transcendental realm that is universal
and necessary for all creatures that are rational.
A Kantian Theory of Justice
John Rawls (1921-2002) relies upon some fundamental
insights of Kant’s to generate a very powerful theory of
justice
Rawls begins with a thought experiment known as the
original position to justify two basic principles of justice.
Rawls asks his readers to imagine that they are to found a
society. What principles of justice would be chosen to
regulate it? Principles chosen behind a “veil of ignorance”
would be objective and impartial, and therefore, justified.
A Kantian Theory of Justice
Rawls argues that ultimately two principles would
be chosen:
1) Everyone has an equal right to “the most
extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar
liberty for others.”
2) Any social and economic inequalities must be
such that “they are both (a) reasonably expected to
be to everyone’s advantage and (b) attached to
positions and offices open to all.”
What About Family Justice?
Susan Miller Okin argues that Rawls does
not provide an analysis of justice within the
family.
According to Okin, “Family justice must be
of central importance for social justice.”
According to Okin, Rawls is ambiguous.