Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals in its vernacular German.
Note: This post is about Kant's theory of duty. It can be therefore be read in conjunction with my post on Kant's theory of free will. As with this previous post, in this post everything in purple is part of Kant's theory, whereas everything in orange is what Kant (or other people) judge to be in opposition to his theory
How is duty possible?
Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) provided perhaps the most sophisticated account of morality ever created in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788). The most fundamental and profound aspect of this account was his three-fold theory of duty. According to this, Kant saw being moral as the equivalent to being dutiful. Kant thought that an action is moral, or dutiful, if and only if it originates from:
- A motive of duty rather than inclination;
- A will which is autonomous rather than heteronomous;
- An imperative which is categorical rather than hypothetical.
For Kant, duty is exercised through the pure motive of duty, the autonomous will and the categorical imperative. In order to understand why Kant equates morality with duty, it is worth considering his reasoning behind each of these three ideas. By looking at each step of Kant's reasoning, we may be able to see the word 'duty' in a different light. For the question at the heart of Kant's moral theory is this: how is duty possible? It is this question that leads to Kant's three-part answer, starting with the supreme motive of morality.
1) The Motive of Duty
Kant thought that all moral actions must be motivated by duty, rather than inclination. Thus Kant's theory is 'deontological' (coming from the Greek word deon, or duty), rather than 'teleological' (coming from the Greek word telos, or purpose). Deontology emphasises duty, whereas teleology, to which Kant is opposed, emphasises the purpose of actions in fulfilling an inclination, such as pleasure. One can think of this distinction between duty and inclination as comparable to the distinction between knowledge obtained a priori versus knowledge obtained a posteriori. Knowledge obtained a priori is gained prior to experience. For instance, it doesn't matter how many times you see 5 bananas and 7 more bananas equalling a total of 12 bananas. For Kant, '5+7=12' is true no matter how many particular instances of that universal law you see. However, knowledge obtained a posteriori is gained from experience, so it could be wrong. For instance, the statement that 'bananas are yellow' is a piece of a posteriori knowledge, since it is gained from seeing, say, 100 bananas being yellow. But as experience is limited, the 101st banana one sees might be not be yellow. It could be a green banana! Thus a priori knowledge is infallible whereas a posteriori knowledge is fallible. The same is true for duty and inclination.
Being moral, for Kant, is doing something from a universally valid principle, such as acting in a fair and just way. The alternative is to act from inclination, such as self-interest, empathy or any other feeling we may have. Whilst duty is a priori and thus infallible, inclination is a posteriori and thus fallible. A duty is comparable with '5+7=12', which is true regardless of circumstances, whilst an inclination is comparable with 'all bananas are yellow', which may only be true in certain circumstances. Duty tells us what we ought to do in all circumstances, whereas our inclination could be applicable only to certain circumstances. Just because we are inclined to stealing an apple, this does not mean that stealing an apple would be the right thing to do. Duty is rational, whereas inclination is somewhat empirical and, therefore, fallible. Kant gives the example of a greengrocer who refrains from overcharging his customers. The greengrocer is therefore doing a beneficial thing, since the consequence is the greengrocers' customers having more money in their pockets after buying their groceries. So everyone is happier as a result. But Kant does not think that happiness (an inclination) is the be-all-and-end-all. The greengrocer is not moral just on the grounds of the consequences of their actions. Rather, the greengrocer is only moral if they are acting from duty.
But Kant's greengrocer is only refraining from overcharging his customers because he does not want his customers to go somewhere else to buy their groceries. They're motivated by self-interest (an inclination), rather than respect for their fellow human beings (a duty). In other words, the greengrocer is apparently, but not really, dutiful. They're acting with the duty of acting fairly, but are not acting from that duty, since their real motive is self interest. They're not acting 'from duty', but 'solely from the purposes of self-interest'. Therefore, for Kant at least, you cannot just be like the greengrocer and act with duty, but rather you must act from duty, or for duty's own sake. So even though the greengrocer would not behave any differently if they were acting from duty, there's still a difference for Kant. It doesn't matter what the consequences are - the motive is the important thing. You can't just be empirical about morals - you have to be rational, so you have to think about what is the right thing. Reason, or a priori thinking, is thus the centrepiece of the first layer of Kant's theory of duty.
However, Hegel (1770 - 1831) articulated a problem with this first element of Kant's theory of duty. The problem is that Kant, by emphasising rational duty, forgets about the irrational side of humanity. For Hegel, Kant's concept of duty is too cold. Rather, Hegel contends, our inclinations are just as important as duties, and ought to be so. The organic culture of language, social practices and values is what makes us who we are. Without an inclination towards our family, for instance, we wouldn't have a good society, since societies are built on family values. Therefore, Hegel challenges Kant's favouring of duty over inclinations.
Anticipating Kant's work, David Hume (1711 - 1776) similarly challenged the notion that morality is rational, or a priori. Rather, Hume saw morality as being derived from a posteriori factors, such as inclinations. For Hume, as well as Hegel, duty is in no way superior to inclination, contrary to Kant's belief. Hume noticed that 'reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions'. Therefore, it is not necessarily a bad thing that the greengrocer is motivated by the inclination of self-interest to not overcharge. Hume noticed that self-interest and other inclinations should be used to achieve good outcomes. For neo-Humeans such as Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832), it does not matter whether the motive is from duty or not: all that matters is whether the consequences alleviate pain and maximise pleasure. In other words, whether our actions produce desirable outcomes according to our inclinations is more important than the supposed duty which Kant thinks should motivate them.
However, Kant responded to these critiques by arguing that duty is exercised through an autonomous, or free, will. In this way, Kant demonstrated that, if the will was free, then motives could and should come from duty. So to see whether Hegel, Hume and Bentham are right, it's worth considering the second layer of Kant's theory of duty.
2) The Autonomous Will
The motive of duty is the only motive, for Kant. Duty, therefore, can be exercised through moral motives. But for moral motives in turn to be possible, they must be exercised through an autonomous, or free, will. Think about it: if the will weren't free, then how could we ever act from duty? If the will weren't free, we would only be able to act from inclinations. Free will, in other words, is the centrepiece of this second layer of Kant's theory of duty, and is what makes the rest of his theory possible.
Kant contrasts an autonomous will with a heteronomous will. If the will is heteronomous, then it has a heteronomy, or plurality, of possible motives. Such motives are nearly always inclinations, such as self-interest or altruism. In this respect, Kant is anticipating the findings of Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) and his followers that instinct governs our inclinations. Feelings such as altruism are based on what best suits (in modern scientific terms) the propagation of our genes. We have no control over our inclinations, so abiding by inclinations gives us heteronomous wills.
Nevertheless, the will, or the mind making moral decisions, need not be heteronomous. Whilst it most frequently abides by inclinations, when making moral decisions it has the capacity to act autonomously. To act autonomously is to act according to a moral law that I give myself, rather than a moral law that someone else gives me. We can escape the 'causality of nature', which governs the physical world, by postulating a 'causality of freedom', which says that the will is autonomous when it is determined by itself and its own maxims. Inclinations, feelings and all the other possible causes that one can think of tend to be part of the causality of nature, and therefore constitute the heteronomous will. But Kant wants us, in our moral decision-making, to use our autonomous will. In essence, this is the moral equivalent of defying gravity.
It must be noted that Kant has no problem with the causality of nature. After all, he wrote a whole book about it in 1781 - the Critique of Pure Reason. But it has no place in his theory of duty, which abides by different rules. Morality is a very different game from physics and mathematics. Morality plays by its own rules. This is not to say that morality is totally subjective. Indeed, because we all share the same causality of freedom, we also share the same rationality. This rationality which we all share means that, although we all will come to the same moral conclusions when we're thinking straight, we are all nevertheless autonomous. This is because 'autonomy' doesn't mean 'being a rebel' for Kant. It simply means acting according to the moral law, which is the same for all human beings.
But Friesdorf et al. (2015) provide some reason to doubt Kant's claim that we all share the same capacity for rational thought and, therefore, autonomy. Their findings hint at 'gender differences in responses to moral dilemmas'. Women, the study found, tended to be more 'deontological', or Kantian, in their approach to moral dilemmas. They would, for instance, think that abiding by the rules of morality is more important than the 'teleological' consequences. (Deontology looks at motives of duty, whereas teleology looks at consequences of actions in fulfilling our inclinations.) Men, however, tended to be less inclined to a Kantian approach, and more inclined to a teleological one. This suggests that we do not all share Kant's rational autonomy.
Moreover, not only is autonomy not the same for everyone, but also 'we have no independent insight into the alleged necessity for presupposing freedom', according to philosopher H.J. Paton (1887 - 1969). There's no real reason why we're free, in other words, and its just an assumption that Kant makes.
However, both Friesdorf and Paton can be countered by relying on the third and final layer of Kant's theory of duty. Whilst the previous two layers give form to morality, this final one gives content to morality. According to this, the idea that we aren't free or that not everyone shares the same rational autonomy can be countered by resorting to the very foundation of the autonomous will and dutiful motives. For duty and autonomy tell us what kind of maxims are moral ones, but they cannot tell us which specific maxims are moral and which are not. So duty is not only exercised through the motive of duty and the autonomous will, but also through the categorical imperative. And it is on the categorical imperative that Kant's theory survives or falls.
3) The Categorical Imperative
Ultimately, duty is possible through the application of what Kant terms the categorical imperative. By 'categorical', Kant really means 'not hypothetical'. A hypothetical imperative is an imperative with an 'if' clause, e.g. 'If I want to live, then it is imperative that I eat healthily'. But a categorical imperative has no such 'if' clause, because it applies to all situations universally, e.g. 'Live!'
Kant thought that all so-called 'categorical imperatives' can be reduced to a simple 'categorical imperative' with three formulations. The first formulation of this three-fold categorical imperative says, 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law'. It is our duty to follow this imperative, which basically says that we should only do something if we would be happy for that to be done by everyone in all circumstances, as if it were a 'universal law'. So we would be violating our moral duty if we failed to abide by this imperative. Even if we try, we might fall short of the mark in two ways. First, we could, when universalising our maxim, make a contradiction in the law of nature. Suicide is such a contradiction, whose maxim is 'From self-love I make it my principle to shorten my life'. This maxim is contradictory because life is a law of nature, so it is self-contradictory to assert that everyone has the right to commit suicide, since that would make the concept of life redundant. Suicide violates the categorical imperative because, if it were to become a universal law, it would be self-contradictory. So suicide cannot become a universal law. The second way in which one could fail to universalise a maxim is by generating a contradiction in the will. For instance, saying that 'I do not care to contribute anything' to people's welfare would not be a contradiction in the law of nature (as it is perfectly possible for everyone to be nasty to one another). But this wouldn't be something that one would reasonably will to occur. One will always will to be given assistance in need, so it is a contradiction in the will to make selfishness a universal law.
However, Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out that even if we avoid these two failings, we could just create really narrow maxims, which 'will permit me to do what I want while prohibiting others' from similarly acting. One could say that, if one's aircraft crashed on 13 October 1972 in the Andes Mountains, then it is permissible to eat the flesh of the 12 people who died in the crash to stay alive if one survived the crash. This maxim could be made a universal law, and would not be contradictory in any way, since it is so narrow that no contradiction can be found. Therefore, Kant's first formulation falls apart on the grounds that, given suitably narrow maxims, it can be used to justify anything.
Nevertheless, as Michael Sandel has pointed out, the first formulation is only a test, so it doesn't matter if it is not perfect when applied to all maxims. The real categorical imperative, he argues, comes in the second formulation, which says, 'Act in such a way that you always treat humanity [...] never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end'. Therefore, in the Gafgen v. Germany case of 2010 at the European Court of Human Rights, which considering whether it was right for police to use the threat of torture to extract information from child-killer Magnus Gafgen, Kant would have argued that it was wrong to use the threat of torture. By threatening Gafgen with torture in order to extract information from him, police were using Gafgen as a means to an end, rather than as an end in himself. Therefore, the only maxims which are acceptable to Kant are ones which treat humans as ends in themselves. The court, coincidentally, more-or-less upholded the Kantian freedom from torture in their verdict. This is also in accordance with Kant's third formulation of the categorical imperative, which says that one should 'Act as if you were, through your maxims, a law-making member of a kingdom of ends'. In other words, Kant would have said that the threat of torture is always wrong because it is not fitting for law-making individuals: law-making individuals tend to favour universal laws over exceptional verdicts. The fact that Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture means that it is inviolable in any situation, since we should always act as if we were law-makers rather than law-breakers.
But here's my problem with the categorical imperative. It emphasises that humans are ends in themselves, and that moral duty is centred on treating humans as equal. Admittedly, it's good that this means that the will is autonomous, since categorical imperatives are only possible through a free will. But I cannot help but ask: is that all morality is?
Because if duty just means acting autonomously, in accordance with the categorical imperative, then there's nothing virtuous about promoting intuitively good things like 'happiness'. Happiness, for Kant, is unimportant, because it's an inclination, an example of the heteronomous will, and a hypothetical imperative. To say that torture is wrong because torture promotes pain rather than happiness is not sufficient for Kant. It's not even a consideration, since only rational duty (exercised through a priori motive, an autonomous will and the categorical imperative) is sufficient for making actions moral.
So Kant cannot, I argue, give a good reason to justify our intuitive belief that happiness is good. Because happiness is a mere inclination, for Kant. All actions supporting happiness are using humans as means to the end of happiness, rather as ends in themselves. But I argue that treating humans as ends in themselves is not in humans' best interests. What is the point of following the law if the world suffers? Increasing happiness and decreasing pain are moral things to do, but Kant does not recognise them as such.
Indeed, what does treating humans as ends in themselves actually mean? If you are to say, 'respecting their dignity', then that begs the question. Indeed, using G.E. Moore's terminology, it's an 'open', or unanswerable question. Because Kant, I argue, cannot answer it. It is far more reasonable to assert 'happiness' as an end in itself, but Kant instead says that humans are ends in themselves. In brief: Kant's theory treats humans as mystical, free entities, when actually we are feeling, sentimental and empathic individuals whose inclinations bind us together more than anything else. If there is a categorical imperative, then Kant does not have it.
A happy duty?
Kant's theory can be thought of as a step-by-step analysis of what moral duty means. Firstly, to act dutifully is to act from the motive of duty. But to act from the motive of duty presupposes the existence of an autonomous will which can generate such motives. This autonomous will is autonomous by virtue of its following the categorical imperative. Kant comes to a lot of valid conclusions in case studies, many of which I would agree with. But by downplaying the importance of happiness, Kant makes 'end in itself' seem to lack meaning. An end is a valuable goal to which we can strive, such as making humans happier. But for Kant we can only treat humans as ends in themselves, as if humans were metaphysical creatures whose inclinations formed a part of their 'scientific' rather than 'moral' selves. I argue that the desire to achieve happiness and avoid suffering is the most categorical imperative there is, since it treats the happiness of humanity as an end in itself. Perhaps that's what duty really means: improving the welfare of each and every human on Earth, since we all share the same capacity, not necessarily to reason, but to be happy. So, if I were Kant, I would say that an action is moral if it originates from:
- A motive of duty, which means the inclination toward the collective happiness of humanity;
- A will that is autonomous, by virtue of its pursuing happiness without external (e.g. governmental or authoritarian) intervention;
- An imperative which is categorical, by virtue of its treating happiness as an end in itself.
Kant thought that duty was treating humans as ends in themselves. But I think we have a greater duty to treat human happiness as an end in itself. Expanding on this view is a matter for another day.
What do you think?