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The categorical imperative is the philosophical concept central to the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and to modern deontological ethics. Kant introduced the concept in his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. It is outlined here according to the arguments therein.
Kant defined an imperative as any proposition that declares a certain kind of action (or inaction) to be necessary. A hypothetical imperative would compel action under a particular circumstance: If I wish to slake my thirst, then I must drink this lemonade. A categorical imperative would denote an absolute, unconditional requirement that exerts its authority in all circumstances, and is both required and justified as an end in itself: I must not ever treat a person merely as a means to some other end.
He expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the moral philosophy of his day because he believed it could never surpass the level of hypothetical imperatives. For example, a consequentialist standard would indicate that murder is wrong because it does not maximize good for the greatest number; but this would be irrelevant to someone who is not interested in maximizing the good. Consequently, Kant argued, hypothetical moral systems cannot persuade moral action or be regarded as bases for moral judgments against others, because the imperatives they are based on rely too heavily on subjective considerations.
A deontological moral system based on the demands of the categorical imperative was presented as an alternative.
Nature of the concept
The nature of a moral proposition ("It is wrong to commit murder") must necessarily mean that a particular act or kind of act ought not be carried out under any circumstance ("One ought not commit murder"). This is the central point of his meta-ethical theory that establishes Kant as an extreme moral objectivist. A categorical imperative is the one and only basis for all moral statements, because a hypothetical imperative would depend on the subjective desires of the rational actors, rendering it powerless to compel moral action.
Freedom and autonomy
In contrast to David Hume, Kant viewed the human individual as a rationally autonomous self-conscious being with full freedom of action and self-determination. For a will to be considered "free", we must understand it as capable of effecting causal power without being caused to do so. But the idea of lawless free will, that is, a will acting without any causal structure, would be self-contradictory. Therefore, a free will must be acting under laws that it gives to itself, and which are universally and objectively valid. This is the rational will.
Although Kant conceded that there could be no conceivable example of free will, because any example would only show us a will as it appears to us — as a subject of natural laws — he nevertheless argued against determinism. He proposed that determinism is logically inconsistent: The determinist claims that because A caused B, and B caused C, that A is the true cause of C. Applied to a case of the human will, a determinist would be arguing that the will does not have causal power because something else had caused the will to act as it did. But that argument merely assumes what it set out to prove; that the human will is not part of the causal chain.
Secondly, Kant remarks that free will is inherently unknowable. Since even a free person could not possibly have knowledge of his own freedom, we cannot use our failure to find a proof for freedom as evidence for a lack of it. The observable world could never contain an example of freedom because it would never show us a will as it appears to itself, but only a will that is subject to natural laws imposed on it. But we do appear to ourselves as free. Therefore he argued for the idea of transcendental freedom — that is, freedom as a presupposition of the question "what ought I to do?" This is what gives us sufficient basis for ascribing moral responsibility: the rational and self-actualizing power of a person, which he calls moral autonomy: "the property the will has of being a law unto itself".
Good Will and Duty
Since considerations of the physical details of actions are necessarily bound up with a person's subjective preferences, and could have been brought about without the action of a rational will, Kant concluded that the expected consequences of an act are themselves morally neutral, and therefore irrelevant to moral deliberation. The only objective basis for moral value would be the rationality of the Good Will, expressed in recognition of moral duty.
Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law set by the categorical imperative. Because the consequences of an act are not the source of its moral worth, the source must be the maxim under which the act is performed, irrespective of all aspects or faculties of desire. Thus, an act can have moral content if, and only if, it is carried out solely with regard to a sense of moral duty; it is not enough that the act be consistent with duty, but carried out from duty.
The first formulation
From this step, Kant concludes that a moral proposition that is true must be one that is not tied to any particular conditions, including the identity of the person doing the moral deliberation. One could not morally command others by saying "It is wrong for you to murder, but it is not wrong for me to murder" because that would be a hypothetical imperative: Effectively saying "If I am person A, murder is right; If I am person B, murder is wrong". Therefore, a moral commandment must have universality, which is to say that it must be disconnected from the particular physical details surrounding the proposition and applicable to all rational beings. This leads to the first formulation of the categorical imperative:
- "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law."
Kant divides the duties imposed by this formulation into two subsets:
Perfect duty
First, we have a perfect duty not to act by maxims that result in logical contradictions when we attempt to universalize them. The moral proposition A: "It is permissible to steal" would result in a contradiction because the notion of stealing presupposed the existence of property. But were A universalized, then there could be no property, and the proposition has logically annihilated itself. Hence we have a perfect duty never to steal. Similarly, if the moral proposition B: "It is permissible to lie" were true, there must be language, but the universalization of lying would destroy the meaningfulness of language. Therefore proposition B results in a logical contradiction, and Kant (rather famously: see below) declared that lying is impermissible in any and all conceivable circumstances.
Imperfect duty
Second, we have imperfect duty, which is the duty to act only by maxims that we would desire to be universalized. Since it depends somewhat on the subjective preferences of mankind, this duty is not as strong as a perfect duty, but it is still morally binding. The moral proposition C: "One should never lend aid to another person unless there is something in it for oneself" could only be morally true if no one ever wanted help from another person, because that is the only case in which we could will it to be true. Since we can determine (by empirical observation) that this is not the case, we have an imperfect duty to help others in their times of need, when possible.
The second formulation
All rational action must set before itself not only a principle, but also an end. Most ends are of a subjective kind, because they need only be pursued if they are in line with some particular hypothetical imperative that a person may choose to adopt. For an end to be objective, it would be categorically necessary that we pursue it. But, as Kant writes in the opening line of Groundwork, "It is impossible to conceive of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except the good will." Because the autonomous will is the one and only source of moral standards, it would contradict the first formulation to claim that a person is merely a means to some other end, rather than always an end in his or her self.
Kant presents the second formulation of the categorical imperative on this basis.
- "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."
By combining this formulation with the first, we learn that a person has perfect duty not to use itself or others merely as a means to some other end. As a slaveowner would be effectively asserting a moral right to own a person as a slave, he or she would be asserting a property right in another person. But this would violate the categorical imperative because it denies the basis for there to be free rational action at all; it denies the status of a person as an end in himself. One cannot, on Kant's account, ever suppose a right to treat another person as a mere means to an end.
The second formulation also leads to the imperfect duty to further the ends of ourselves and others. If any person desires perfection in himself or others, it would be his moral duty to seek that end for all persons equally, so long as that end does not contradict perfect duty.
The third formulation
Because a truly autonomous will would not be subject to any particular interest, it would only be subject to those laws which it makes for itself. But it must also regard those laws as if they would be binding to others, or they would not be universalizable, and hence they would not be laws of conduct at all. Thus Kant presents the notion of the hypothetical Kingdom of Ends of which he suggests all persons should consider themselves both members and heads.
- "So act as though you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends."
We ought to act only by maxims which would harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends. We have perfect duty not to act by maxims that create incoherent or impossible states of natural affairs when we attempt to universalize them, and we have imperfect duty not to act by maxims that lead to unstable or greatly undesirable states of affairs.
Criticism
- Main article: Deontological ethics
Related topics
References
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