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:

  1. The origin of moral concepts is entirely a priori in reason.
  2. Moral concepts cannot be abstracted from empirical knowledge.
  3. The non-empirical, pure, nature of moral concepts dignify them as being supreme practical principles.
  4. This value of moral concepts as pure and thus good practical principles is reduced if any empirical knowledge is added in.
  5. 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.

CONCLUDING REMARK

The speculative employment of reason with respect to nature leads to the absolute necessity of some supreme cause of the world: the practical employment of reason with a view to freedom leads also to absolute necessity, but only of the laws of the actions of a rational being as such. Now it is an essential principle of reason, however employed, to push its knowledge to a consciousness of its necessity (without which it would not be rational knowledge). It is, however, an equally essential restriction of the same reason that it can neither discern the necessity of what is or what happens, nor of what ought to happen, unless a condition is supposed on which it is or happens or ought to happen. In this way, however, by the constant inquiry for the condition, the satisfaction of reason is only further and further postponed. Hence it unceasingly seeks the unconditionally necessary and finds itself forced to assume it, although without any means of making it comprehensible to itself, happy enough if only it can discover a conception which agrees with this assumption. It is therefore no fault in our deduction of the supreme principle of morality, but an objection that should be made to human reason in general, that it cannot enable us to conceive the absolute necessity of an unconditional practical law (such as the categorical imperative must be). It cannot be blamed for refusing to explain this necessity by a condition, that is to say, by means of some interest assumed as a basis, since the law would then cease to be a supreme law of reason. And thus while we do not comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, we yet comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly demanded of a philosophy which strives to carry its principles up to the very limit of human reason.