Unlike Aquinas, Kant did not believe that morality should be founded on natural theology. He shared with Aquinas a commitment to reason as a guide to right action, although unlike Aquinas he did not bring in any assumptions which depended on belief in God as part of his approach to morality (Aquinas, as we have seen, was strongly influenced by his belief that human beings survive death and their destiny lies in God). Kant did not consider that God’s existence could be proved – he rejected the cosmological and ontological arguments – however he thought that God’s existence was a postulate of practical reason. Effectively Kant thought that, on the basis of morality, God’s existence could be arrived at as a necessary postulate of a just universe, however this is not to say that Kant thought that God’s existence could be proved. Part of Kant’s approach to morality was that individuals should act as if there was a God – but this is not the same as saying that there is a God.
Kant’s theory is deontological – that is it stresses duty or obligation (this comes from the Greek deon meaning duty). The opening words of the Groundwork provide a ringing declaration of Kant’s fundamental position:
It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and any other talents of the mind we care to name, or courage, resolution, and constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt good and desirable in many respects; but they can also be extremely bad and hurtful when the will is not good which has to make use of these gifts …
The goodness of a human being’s will does not depend on the results it produces since so many factors outside our control may determine the results:
A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes … it is good through its willing alone – that is, good in itself.
In fact, the more human reason ‘concerns itself with the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the farther does man get from true contentment’ (5). A good will is fostered by a human being acting rationally and eliminating those inclinations and desires which tend to undermine rational decision-making. This does not mean that inclinations are necessarily wrong – simpy that they are not a reliable guide to the rightness of moral conduct.
If the development of a ‘good will’ is the highest task for any human being, there is one essential precondition which Kant does not argue for but considers must be assumed even though it cannot be proved – that is that human beings are free. Without freedom, there can be no discussion of morality as morality necessarily presupposes the ability to choose right or wrong. If human choices are wholly determined – if we are not free – then we are not moral agents.
Kant’s method is to start by assuming that moral judgements are true. He then sets out to analyse the conditions which must be in force if these are to be true.
Kant distinguishes between two types of imperatives or commands under which human beings act:
Hypothetical imperatives are imperatives that are based on an ‘if’, for instance: ‘If you want to stay healthy, take exercise’ or ‘If you want your wife to love you, remember her birthday’. We can reject the command (to take exercise or to remember birthdays) if we are willing to reject the ‘if’ on which the command rests. These imperatives bid us do things which are a means to some end. They are arrived at by the exercise of pure reason.
Categorical imperatives, by contrast, are not based on any ‘if’, they do not depend on a particular end and, Kant considers, they would be followed by any fully rational agent. They are ends in themselves and not means to some other end. Moral duties are categorical because they should be followed for the sake of duty only, simply because they are duties and not for any other reason. Categorical imperatives are arrived at through practical reason and they are understood as a basis for action.
There is no answer to the question, ‘Why should I do my duty?’ except ‘Because it is your duty.’ If there was any answer it would represent a reason and would make the imperative hypothetical and not categorical.
Human beings, in Kant’s view, are not wholly rational – but they can strive to become so. Animals are dominated by desires and instincts and these are present in human beings as well. However Kant considers that humans also have the ability to reason and, through the exercise of reason, to act not in accordance with our inclinations but according to the demands that reason makes on us – in other words from a sense of duty. A categorical imperative is one that excludes self-interest and would be one that any fully rational agent (human or otherwise) would follow and if any command is held to be categorical, it is necessary to show that it fits under this heading.
It is not easy to separate actions done from an inclination and those done from a sense of duty – it is important to recognise that it is not the action which determines goodness but the intention, motive and reason lying behind the action. The businessman who is honest because it suits him or because he feels like being honest is not, according to Kant, acting morally because he is not acting rationally. The good person must act correctly, according to reason, no matter what the consequences and independent of his or her own feelings or inclinations. If a person wills to perform an act, and if this willing does not rest on a sense of duty, then it will not be a morally good action. An action which is not done from inclination at all but purely rationally, from a sense of duty, will be a morally good action. This does not mean that one has to act against one’s inclinations, but it does mean that one’s inclinations cannot determine one’s moral duty.
There are, of course, particular moral rules which are categorical and which everyone would agree to such as ‘Thou shalt not kill’, but Kant considers these to be derived from a more general principle and he seeks to determine what this is. He arrives at a number of different formulations of what he terms ‘The Categorical Imperative’ on which all moral commands are based. The best known are the three that Kant includes in his summary of the Groundwork (79–81) and which H. J. Paton (in The Moral Law, Hutchinson) translates as follows:
1 Act as if the maxim of your action was to become through your will a universal law of nature.
This is the Formula of the Law of Nature and is saying that we should act in such a way that we can will that the maxim (or general principle) under which we act should be a general law for everyone. Kant therefore aims to ensure that we eliminate self-interest in the particular situation in which we find ourselves. Kant considers that if we will to act wholly rationally according to such a principle, then we shall develop a good will. There are, however, other formulations, including what Kant terms the Practical Imperative –
2. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
This is the Formula of the End in Itself. Kant says that it can never be right to treat people just as a means to some end – human beings are always ‘ends in themselves’ and Kant describes human beings as ‘holy’ because of this. It can never be right, therefore, to use human beings as a means to the end of our own happiness or to treat any group of people as a minority that does not matter. This principle enshrines the idea of the equality of each and every human being irrespective of class, colour, race, sex, age or circumstance.
3. So act as if you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.
This is the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends. Kant envisaged rational agents acting as if they were making laws for themselves based on the use of reason and, in so far as they do this, they will become ‘lawmaking members of a kingdom of ends’. The laws adopted by all members will coincide because they are all rational and if there are disagreements then rational arguments should be able to resolve these.
It is, perhaps, significant to note the similarities between Kant’s call to disinterested duty and Jesus’ call