Chapter VI Kant’s Moral Theory
Kant’s moral theory is an integral part of his philosophical system. If the Critique of Pure Reason argues the impotence of reason in the sphere of speculation, the Critique of Practical Reason affirms its sovereignty in the sphere of practice. The second Critique is thus the complement of the first. Kant’s treatment of moral problems being largely the consequence of the conclusions of the first Critique, his moral theory is thus mainly metaphysical. The title of one of his works on moral theory, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, bears this out. There were, no doubt, other influences which had their effect on his conception of morality. He tells us himself that he was inspired by the teaching of Rousseau on the dignity and worth of man. He was undoubtedly repelled into a reaction against the sentimental school of Shaftesbury, which in its German adherents insisted on the agreeable and gentlemanly nature of virtue with an almost sickly sentiment. This reaction accounts for the extreme emphasis laid by Kant on the divorce between duty and any kind of inclination. But his doctrine as a whole can only be understood in the light of the conclusions of the first Critique.
Kant’s conception of freedom or autonomy of the will is the key to his moral theory. “On the hypothesis of freedom of the will,” he says, “morality together with its principle follows from it by mere analysis of the conception.” We saw in the last chapter that Kant regarded human action, when looked at from an anthropological point of view, as phenomenal, and therefore subject to the law of cause and effect. If we think of man as a creature of inclination, with likes and dislikes, we seem, in considering men’s differences from one another in this respect, to be dealing with matters of fact over which men have no control. We are born and grow up with different natures, with the result that one man likes one thing, another another; one man’s temptations do not tempt another, what one man finds easy another finds difficult. We seem here to be in a world where causation rules. If men act differently, it is because their external environment, acting upon their different natures, calls out different responses. So far, then, says Kant, as men act according to inclination, do things because they like doing them, or avoid them because they dislike them, their actions are what he calls heteronomous, governed by laws over which they have no control. We assume, whenever we are trying to explain human actions, that they are the result of the interaction of character and environment, and are not to be praised or blamed but understood. Tout comprendre est tout pardonner.
But when we consider our moral judgments we seem to be in a different world, for there are some actions which we think we or others ought to have done or ought not to have done, and this obligation has nothing to do with our likes and dislikes. If we look back upon a past action of our own, we may see why we did it, understand how the temptation to it appealed with peculiar strength to something in our nature, yet nevertheless we may say that we ought not to have done it, and with that judgment goes the conviction that we need not have done it. The conception of “what ought to be” is on a different plane from the conception of “what is,” and assumes a different kind of causality. It assumes that, when we are done with our analysis of character, of a man’s likes and dislikes and the effect of circumstances upon them, we can still assume that it is in his power to do what he ought and to abstain from doing what he ought not. We praise the first and blame the second, whether in ourselves or others, just because we assume, over and above inclination and disinclination, a possibility of acting or not acting as duty demands.
Thus Kant analyses the assumption of moral judgment. But it is still no more than an assumption, and he has to ask how it can be reconciled with the seemingly contradictory principle of causation. The analysis of the third antinomy in the first Critique, as we saw, prepared the way by maintaining that the same action might be phenomenally determined, and free as the action of a thing in itself, were there another form of causality—free causality or self-determination. For the existence of such another form of causality the first Critique offered no evidence. Kant’s concern is to show that morality assumes it; for the claim of duty is that a man should not act as a creature of inclination, of likes and dislikes. Duty claims to cut across all such empirical considerations. The motive to do what duty demands must come from elsewhere. It may then be found to be a claim that man should act not as a part of the physical world, but as a moral being. For man, as well as an observer and understander of other men, is also a moral agent. As such he stands in quite different relations to other men. He treats them and himself as moral agents, responsible for their actions. As a member of the world of moral relations he acknowledges a system of rights and duties, he holds himself responsible to other men as they are responsible to him, and all this has nothing to do with what a man wants or does not want to do, with how easy or how difficult he may find it to perform what duty demands. In this he is assuming in himself and other men a power of determining the will in accordance with the moral law. That, just because it takes no account of likes and dislikes, cannot be derived from these or from considerations of circumstances or environment. It must be deducible from the nature of man as a moral being. In obeying the moral law, then, man will be obeying a law that comes from himself. His will will be self-legislative. This power of acting in accordance with a law that comes from the nature of man as a rational, responsible being, and not as a member of the world of causes and effects, is moral freedom; it is the assumption of all moral judgment and action. It cannot, Kant holds, be explained. For all explanation is the work of the understanding, and that can explain only phenomena. It is enough that the first Critique has shown that phenomenal causality is not inconsistent with the possibility of another causality. In the moral sphere we act and judge as if we were free. The moral law and duty make claims upon us on the same assumption. Moral freedom, then, is the ground of the possibility of moral experience.
Kant’s account of duty is determined by the sharp separation which he makes of man as moral agent and man regarded “from the point of view of anthropology.” The commands of duty must be derived solely from the nature of man as a moral agent. If they were the consequence of man’s empirical nature or his surroundings, they would have no claim to override his promptings of inclination or pleasure. He describes these commands as categorical, and the principle of morality as a categorical imperative. The meaning of this phrase lies in its opposition to hypothetical. Many commands and principles are, Kant says, hypothetical. They assume that men desire certain ends, happiness or health or success, and the actions they advise are advised as means to such ends. The law of morality is quite different from such prudential maxims. It does not say, “If you want to be happy or to save your soul, then act thus and thus.” Its commands are absolute, for they appeal to man simply as a rational being. They must therefore be derived solely from a consideration of man’s rationality. It is difficult at first sight to see how any commands can be deduced from a consideration so abstract. How, we might say, can man’s rationality be known and recognised except in the content of what he does and thinks?
Kant seeks to derive his imperative from the contrast between acting as a moral agent and following inclination. Man regards himself as a moral agent, morally responsible for his conduct, and he regards others as morally responsible, whatever his or their particular nature or character may be. That means that he must act as he thinks any one else would be bound to act, and from this Kant deduces his formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will to be a universal law.” Another formula indicates more clearly the relation of duty to a society of moral agents responsible to one another: “Act so that you treat humanity, in your person and in the person of every one else, always as an end as well as a means, never merely as a means.” It is only by following such imperatives that we can rise above the promptings of circumstance, for only thus is the will self-legislative. In obeying such an imperative our will is self-determined, for it is following a principle that is derived from man’s nature as independent and transcendent of the world of phenomena. Hence in moral action we are in contact with the reality of things more truly than in any understanding of phenomena. The moral law has a dignity which no natural inclinations or likings can have, and the good-will, the will which follows such a law, has a similar worth and dignity. “There is nothing in the world—nay, even beyond the world—nothing conceivable, which can be regarded as good without qualification, saving alone a good will.”
Such in outline is Kant’s account of morality. A discussion of some of the difficulties which a consideration of it suggests may help to make its purport more clear. Kant holds that the principles of right action can be deduced directly from the imperative he has formulated, and need take therefore no account of historical circumstance. Now, it is easy to show that, when we do an action which we know to be wrong, we are making an exception in our own favour. We cannot universalise the maxim of our own conduct. When we do what we know to be wrong, we recognise what is right. We say, “This is how any one ought to act in these circumstances, but I am not going to do it.” We must learn to look upon ourselves as we should look upon and judge any other moral agent. If, when taxed with wrongdoing, we reply, “I wanted to do it,” or “That is the kind of person I am,” or “That is the way I am made,” we are abandoning the moral position, and the answer is, “Whether you wanted it or not, you ought not to have done it,” or, “Well, you ought to become different.” But this does not help us when, looking at actions from a moral standpoint, it is difficult to say what ought to be done. Kant tries to show that wrong action, if universalised, is always contradictory. He takes the instance of telling a lie. If that were universal no one would believe any one else, and there would be no point in telling a lie. Lying is essentially parasitical. But this does not help us in the familiar problem in casuistry, whether it is allowable to tell a lie to save life. For here we have a conflict between two maxims, both of which can be universalised. We cannot regard such a situation as simply involving a question of telling the truth or of saving life. We must consider the circumstances of the case. This is even more evident if we apply Kant’s rule to the question of whether celibacy is ever justified. If celibacy were universal, there would soon be nobody to be celibate, but it does not therefore follow that some people under certain circumstances ought not to be celibate. The question cannot be answered without reference to circumstances. The moral of this is that the categorical imperative does not enable us to act without individual moral judgment in individual cases. Further, in one of the instances which Kant gives he admits that there are certain ways of action which might be universalised, but which he nevertheless holds to be wrong. He instances the duty of being industrious. A society could quite well be imagined in which every one was lazy, but he says, “It cannot be willed.” The ultimate appeal here is to what the moral reason wills. That means that we must admit that the moral reason or moral judgment has a content not derivable simply from the conception of the moral law; that there are certain kinds of life, certain kinds of action, which we judge to be good, and others which we judge to be bad. But, if this is so, we must give up the sharp separation Kant makes between the moral law and nature, and allow that things in nature can have a moral value. It may still be true that they only have moral value through their relation to a good will, and have no moral significance apart from such a relation.
The difficulties created by Kant’s sharp separation of the moral and the phenomenal worlds are equally apparent in his discussion of motives. He conceives the individual as phenomenal, to be determined solely by pleasure and pain. The power of the moral law is manifest, therefore, when its commands run counter to inclination, and the motive of respect for the moral law conquers inclination. It is true to say that a man’s likes and dislikes in themselves are not to the point when we are asking what he ought to do, but Kant sometimes speaks as though there could be no moral value in an action which did not go against inclination. This is perilously near that morbid theory of conscience which assumes that the fact that an action would be very disagreeable to the agent is itself proof that the proposal to perform it is the voice of conscience. Here again we have to say that the fact that inclinations viewed merely as inclinations have no moral value, does not show that, relatively to the good will, one may not be better than another. There is nothing to be proud of in the fact that we dislike doing our duty.
This sharp separation between the world of morality and science was somewhat tempered in Kant’s third Critique, which we shall examine in the next chapter.