A-Level ethics: Kantian ethics

• a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview

• Central to Enlightenment thought was the use of reason - the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition.

True enlightenment means living according to our own reason and a in a state of autonomy – not living by other peoples principles because we don’t have the confidence to follow our own principles or that we are not using our own minds.

-  Kant is seen as the supreme exemplar of the enlightenment as he believed in using reason and that we should govern our own lives fully and rationally.

True enlightenment is to live according to our reason, a state of true autonomy and not to live being dictated by others

he believed we could use reason to work out a consistent set of moral principles

Kant attempted to appease claims of rationalists who argued that we can certainly know things through a priori knowledge and empiricists.

He investigated the idea that human knowledge and reason is limited -> allowed him to distinguish between what could be in the unknowable world and the world that we know in our minds.

Kant saw autonomy as the central condition of rational thought and in groundwork he argues that errors in moral thinking are due to heteronymous approaches e.g. obedience to laws created by others.

Kant disagrees and argues that the only moral law we should use is our reason and we need to use our reason without coercion.

through pure reason and not sense experience

Fixed rules that must always apply e.g. morals

Must be able to be universalized

- The only thing good in itself

Good will is held by a person who has the right intention when performing their duty

- once we have used our reason to figure out our duty, we should then act purely out of a sense of duty. We should leave out personal feelings/desires and just do ‘duty for duty’s sake’ – need to act out of duty not in accordance with duty

a shopkeeper dosen’t overcharge an inexperienced customer - but only because it is in his self-interest not to do so

he calculates that his customer is more likely to return and that his shop will have a good reputation

• behaves honestly because he feels he ought to do so

Reason allows us to use our innate sense of duty -> ‘duty’ means doing what we ought to do and that we have an obligation to perform certain actions.

• motives need to be pure and doing duty for any other reason does not count

• the good will is done for its own sake

suicide, lying and breaking promises, developing talents and helping others

 A man has had very bad luck and feels tired of his life, the man still has reason and debates whether it is ethical to take his own life and questions if it goes against his duty. This action should not be universalized as ending one's life out of self-love contradicts itself and therefore could not exist as a system of nature.

Someone has no choice but to borrow some money despite knowing the fact that he will not be able to repay the lender -could not be a universal law of nature as it would contradict itself, anyone in difficult situations could promise things that they know they can't keep for their own benefit, however, this would therefore make the promise impossible.

A man has a talent that he has learned from a culture which may prove useful to him if he uses it. However, the man is comfortable how he is and rather than improving the new talent he is happy with the talents he has - this cannot be a universal law as it does not follow the idea of our natural instinct as humans as we should all want to develop and improve our gifts as it helps him be useful for many different purposes.  

The man knows that other people suffer with difficult problems and that he could help them, however he feels no inclination to do so.

This could not be a universal law as it would contradict ideas of sympathy and general good-will and instead promotes doing things for our own self-interest and not having compassion for others.

what we need to do to achieve a goal – no requirement to follow but how we need to act if we want to achieve something

our reason tells us what needs to be done

Kant defined analytic propositions to be ones in which the predicate is contained by the subject such as ‘A triangle has three sides’. In this example the subject is the triangle and the predicate is that it has three sides - that it is part of the concept of a triangle that it has three sides.

Kant defined synthetic propositions as those in which the predicate is not contained in the subject such as ‘Some sisters are blonde’. This statement is true but it is synthetic because being blonde is not part of the concept of being a sister.             

Kant said that denying an analytic truth would involve a contradiction whereas denying a synthetic truth could be wrong but would not be contradictory. 

• we can only reasonably be held morally responsible for things over which we have some control and because the consequences of actions are often outside our control, these consequences cannot be crucial to morality.

• as we don’t necessarily have complete control over our emotional reactions, these cannot be essential to morality either.

• Kant believed that if morality was to be available to all, then it had to rely entirely on the control of the person, and in particular on our sense of duty.

axe murder -

Kant seems to say that it is always wrong to lie—even to a murderer asking for the whereabouts of his victim—and that if one doesn’t lie and despite one’s good intentions this leads to the murderer’s capture of the victim, then the liar is not responsible for the killing of the victim, as the most moralist thing to do was to tell the truth

an unconditional moral obligation which is binding in all circumstances and is not dependent on a person's inclination or purpose

• 3 forms

Formula of the Law of nature:

act only on a maxim that you can will to a universal law – we can only do what we are willing for everyone to do

- Kant argues that if this is consistently applied than we can see what duty requires

Kant thought that for an action to be moral, the underlying maxim had to be a universalizable one.

-  Does it being willing to generalize make it moral? Just because people may be happy for people to do the same thing does not make something moral.

-  Aquinas argued that no action can be universalized and remain moral in this way – if we need to always act on a universifiable maxim regardless of consequences then this may permit harm in some cases e.g. Aquinas example – could I have behaved morally if the consequence of my paying of the debt was death and destruction in my country?

Formula of the end itself:

treating someone as an ends and never only a means – things should be done for the good of people and they should never be used for someone else’s ideal

always recognise other’s humanity: the fact that they are individuals with wills and desires of their own

- to treat another person as a means is to deny that person the right to be a rational and independent judge of his or her own actions

-          The real world is too complex e.g. Winston Churchill had to allow Coventry to be bombed otherwise the Germans would realize that people had broken the enigma codes, and therefore it is not clear cut that people should not be used as ends and this does not help us determine what our duty is

Formula of the kingdom of ends:

to treat everyone as an end in the kingdom of ends – actions are for the sake of persons and we should treat everyone as people that for which good should be done

Every rational being should act if through his universalized maxim was always a legislating member in the kingdom of ends.

Kant imagined a hypothetical Kingdom of Ends – an ideal universal state where all members of that community are deserving of respect and treated as autonomous and free individuals. Everyone should act as if every other person was an “end”, a free and autonomous agent.

Does not add much accept it is a reminder of our duty and responsibility which emphasizes the significance of ends

-        We are free beings.

-        We are immoral.

-        God exists.

Kant makes the individual the only authority for moral judgement and seems to grant freedom to do anything which can be consistently universalised. In order for it to make sense, Kant has to postulate the existence of God, freedom and immortality. Kant’s system bases ethics of an intrinsic good– argues we ought to do our duty for no other reason that it is our duty to do so.

• alongside the categorical imperatives

things that we must postulate in order to follow pure practical reason.

-   Freedom is connected to Kant’s view that we are fully rational beings and that we are capable of knowing what our duty is – when we make a moral decision we are acknowledging our freedom and accepting that we are immortal

- We do our duty because it is rational for us to do it, not because God commanded it

- Perfect virtue should rationally be rewarded by perfect happiness -> perfect happiness + perfect goodness = the summum bonum -> not achieved in this life e.g. good things happen to bad people -> because the summon bonum ought to be achieved, it can be achieved -> if it is not achievable in this life, it must be in the next life which means we need immortality -> if the summum bonum exists in the next life there must be someone to provide it ->  this person must be God

- However, Kant assumes the universe is rational – just because something ought to be true doesn’t mean it will be, just because bad things happen to good people does not mean that they will therefore receive compensation

The summum bonum is the highest good is a state where both happiness and virtue are united. Kant believes it is the virtuous person who has a good will which is vital for morality and happiness is not guaranteed. The summum bonum cannot be guaranteed in this life so there must be life after death were can achieve it – which argues for the existence of God as well.

• The supreme/highest good which is a reward received after death for acting morally

- Because of him promoting the use of unaided human reason – rightness is known by reason alone

- he gave excuses for religious services he was supposed to attend

- if morality was an internalization of God’s commands then the source would be heteronymous

- Kant argues that we must make ethical decisions off reason alone, however in our actual decision making we use emotions such as sympathy and compassion - Kant’s approach provides reasons not motivation for moral action

Emotions are a fundamental part of human experience and feelings often motivate moral responses – distancing ourselves from emotions which often drive motives is too difficult.

- There is no moral merit in the enjoyment of our action if we just do it because it is our duty and for no other reason. If the action was done for no other reason than its own sake than it would be ‘cold charity’. However, doing good things gladly is a large part of being moral e.g. Aristotle stated that it was not enough to just do a good thing – to be truly moral something must be done with the right attitude

An idealized concept of morality – not practical as moral decisions are often made in situations when we are under high emotional pressure and expecting to make decisions based off of reason alone is too unrealistic.

Pojman discusses the issue of different understandings of reason - if we agree that reason is an intrinsic value, does it not follow that those who have more of this quality should be respected and honoured more than those who have less? Kant is unreasonable to place reason as the only principle on moral decision-making: given that humans may act out of compassion or love.

good will:

could we imagine a world in which non-moral virtues are always and necessarily put to good use? Can’t the good will be put to bad use? Even intelligence can be put to bad uses or have bad effects, so can the good will. The good will may be a necessary element to any morally good action, but it’s another question whether it is also a sufficient condition to moral goodness.

free will:

we are not free to make our own decisions and that we are followers by nature – proved in Milgram experiment.

Kant’s moral theology has been criticised as being inconsistent with his overall system. Schopenhauer thought that Kant’s moral theology was antithetical to Kant’s idea of moral autonomy. If the justification of morality depends on the existence of God, and we have no convincing evidence for the existence of God, are we justified in rejecting morality?

It is not clear that any action can truly be universalised in this way and remain moral, Alasdair MacIntyre said it was possible to use Kant’s idea of universalizability to justify anything: “All I need to do to characterise the proposed action in such a way that the maxim will permit me to do what I want while prohibiting others from doing what would nullify the action if universalised.”