Immanuel Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals: Second Section and Third Section
Read the Second Section from Immanuel Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant says five things are clear:
- The origin of moral concepts is entirely a priori in reason.
- Moral concepts cannot be abstracted from empirical knowledge.
- The non-empirical, pure, nature of moral concepts dignify them as being supreme practical principles.
- This value of moral concepts as pure and thus good practical principles is reduced if any empirical knowledge is added in.
- One must derive for oneself and apply these moral concepts also from pure reason – unmixed with empirical knowledge.
Do these claims seem as clear and correct to you as they do to Kant? What is Kant referring to in his concept of the categorial imperative?
Kant gives a second version of the categorical imperative which he called the practical imperative. Interpreters sometimes call it the imperative of dignity or of human dignity. Can you describe that version of the categorical imperative?
Kant says these two versions of the categorical imperative ultimately say the same thing. Why do you think he believes this?
Unlike our study of hypothetical examples in this course, Kant believes that morality is not something that can be derived from examples. What he wants is to find universal principles of morality that spring wholly from reason and not from experience. This is why he calls his system metaphysics of morals. In the second section, Kant argues forcefully against utilitarian (or popular) moral theories, and he puts forward his own, absolutely binding moral principle: the categorical imperative.
In Kant's ethical theory, a categorical imperative is a universal command, a principle that should be followed by anyone in any situation. If a command like "always tell the truth" can be chosen and represents a moral rule we all should follow, then it has the status of a categorical imperative, and is therefore a duty. Kant's examples in this section are meant to show that actions can only be considered truly moral if they are motivated by the duty to follow this imperative.
What does Kant mean by autonomy and heteronomy? Kant gives a third version of the categorical imperative in this section. What is this version? Here, Kant is concerned here that our principles of morality must come from ourselves and from our own rationality. However, he thinks of our rationality in universal terms, not as our own individual persuasion or opinion. Rationality and rational morality is always an objective science for Kant.
In the third section, Kant presents his view of what human freedom consists in, namely, following our rational principles rather than being guided by our appetite for please and our desire to avoid pain. Because Kant has based both freedom and morality on rationality, this means that to be free is to be moral. Or, in other words, to be free is to be bound by our duty to ourselves.
How is a Categorical Imperative Possible?
Every rational being reckons himself qua intelligence as belonging to the world of understanding, and it is simply as an efficient cause belonging to that world that he calls his causality a will. On the other side he is also conscious of himself as a part of the world of sense in which his actions, which are mere appearances [phenomena] of that causality, are displayed; we cannot, however, discern how they are possible from this causality which we do not know; but instead of that, these actions as belonging to the sensible world must be viewed as determined by other phenomena, namely, desires and inclinations. If therefore I were only a member of the world of understanding, then all my actions would perfectly conform to the principle of autonomy of the pure will; if I were only a part of the world of sense, they would necessarily be assumed to conform wholly to the natural law of desires and inclinations, in other words, to the heteronomy of nature. (The former would rest on morality as the supreme principle, the latter on happiness.) Since, however, the world of understanding contains the foundation of the world of sense, and consequently of its laws also, and accordingly gives the law to my will (which belongs wholly to the world of understanding) directly, and must be conceived as doing so, it follows that, although on the one side I must regard myself as a being belonging to the world of sense, yet on the other side I must recognize myself as subject as an intelligence to the law of the world of understanding, i.e., to reason, which contains this law in the idea of freedom, and therefore as subject to the autonomy of the will: consequently I must regard the laws of the world of understanding as imperatives for me and the actions which conform to them as duties.
And thus what makes categorical imperatives possible is this, that the idea of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible world, in consequence of which, if I were nothing else, all my actions would always conform to the autonomy of the will; but as I at the same time intuite myself as a member of the world of sense, they ought so to conform, and this categorical "ought" implies a synthetic a priori proposition, inasmuch as besides my will as affected by sensible desires there is added further the idea of the same will but as belonging to the world of the understanding, pure and practical of itself, which contains the supreme condition according to reason of the former will; precisely as to the intuitions of sense there are added concepts of the understanding which of themselves signify nothing but regular form in general and in this way synthetic a priori propositions become possible, on which all knowledge of physical nature rests.
The practical use of common human reason confirms this reasoning. There is no one, not even the most consummate villain, provided only that he is otherwise accustomed to the use of reason, who, when we set before him examples of honesty of purpose, of steadfastness in following good maxims, of sympathy and general benevolence (even combined with great sacrifices of advantages and comfort), does not wish that he might also possess these qualities. Only on account of his inclinations and impulses he cannot attain this in himself, but at the same time he wishes to be free from such inclinations which are burdensome to himself. He proves by this that he transfers himself in thought with a will free from the impulses of the sensibility into an order of things wholly different from that of his desires in the field of the sensibility; since he cannot expect to obtain by that wish any gratification of his desires, nor any position which would satisfy any of his actual or supposable inclinations (for this would destroy the pre-eminence of the very idea which wrests that wish from him): he can only expect a greater intrinsic worth of his own person. This better person, however, he imagines himself to be when be transfers himself to the point of view of a member of the world of the understanding, to which he is involuntarily forced by the idea of freedom, i.e., of independence on determining causes of the world of sense; and from this point of view he is conscious of a good will, which by his own confession constitutes the law for the bad will that he possesses as a member of the world of sense- a law whose authority he recognizes while transgressing it. What he morally "ought" is then what he necessarily "would," as a member of the world of the understanding, and is conceived by him as an "ought" only inasmuch as he likewise considers himself as a member of the world of sense.