From the specification:
Kantian deontology – social, political and cultural influences on Kant’s ethical theory, duty-based ethics, the categorical imperative in its different formulations, prima facie duties, and contemporary applications of rule and duty-based ethics.
Although Kant published his views about morality before Bentham, utilitarian ideas were already around at the time he was writing and Kant was responding to them. However, Kant was completely opposed to utilitarian thinking.
Suppose we give money to a medical charity because we feel compassion for people who are suffering from some kind of unpleasant medical condition. Most people would probably think that our action was moral. But not Kant. Kant thought that basing morality on feelings, as utilitarians do, was completely wrong. Why? Because he was concerned about moral consistency. He wanted to make sure that we would always do the right thing for the right reasons, whatever situation we found ourselves in. But our feelings about things do not guarantee this kind of consistency. For example, what happens when we don’t feel especially compassionate, or don’t feel like doing something we know to be morally right, perhaps because it would be hard to act in the right way? Kant wanted to design a system of ethics that would make sure that we would still act morally, even when we felt reluctant to do so. Utilitarianism could not manage this because it was based on collective feelings of pleasure and pain.
Unlike the utilitarians, for whom only the consequences matter, Kant thought that consequences could not always be predicted accurately, so we would be playing a dangerous game if we based our moral decision making on what might happen. For example, Kant himself argued that we should not lie to someone with murderous intentions who was looking for someone whose hiding place we knew about, simply because we might be wrong. Unknown to us, that person might have moved and is now hiding in precisely the place we have sent the murderer to. So instead of preventing a murder by telling a lie, we have inadvertently caused one to happen. So for Kant, the consequences never matter in making moral decisions.
Kant was also concerned that we should do the right thing for the right reasons. Again, he provides examples of what he thinks are the wrong motives for our moral behaviour. First of all, he wrote about a boy buying a loaf of bread from a baker. The boy is naive and has no concept of the value of money. So the baker could overcharge him. But the baker chooses not to, for the reason that if his deception was discovered, word might get around and his business might be damaged as less people would visit his shop. Kant thinks that although the baker did the right thing, his motive for not cheating the boy was immoral because it was selfish.
Kant also mentioned what he called ‘hypothetical imperatives’. An imperative is a command, something we tell ourselves to do when we are thinking about how to solve a practical problem in real life. These are usually set out in an ‘if/then’ format e.g. ‘If I want to go to Croydon, then I need to get the tram’, or ‘If I want to lose weight, then I’d better go on a diet.’ Sometimes, we try to solve moral problems this way. For example, ‘If I want to be hired at the end of the TV series The Apprentice, then I’d better think of ways to stab the other contestants in the back.’
Unfortunately, hypothetical imperatives aren’t moral either. They are based on outcomes, consequences, what we want to achieve. If we’re thinking about the end result, that’s not moral either. Kant wants to make sure that whatever our moral duty is gets performed for duty’s sake and not for any other reason.
Here, we finally get our first glimpse of what Kant thought was the right motive for doing something. We are truly being moral, Kant believed, when we do something with what he called ‘a good will’. A good will was what he thought was the only pure motive for a moral action. And it has got nothing to do with feeling good. Actions performed with a good will are performed out of a sense of duty, even though we may not feel like doing them. For example, when we reluctantly visit a sick relative in hospital that we don’t really like or care about, we could be said to be acting out of a sense of ‘good will’ or duty. Oddly, Kant believed that when we don’t let ourselves be dragged down by our reluctant feelings, when we rise above them, this is when we are at our most free.
Here there is a bit of a similarity with the rule utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill. Often, when we don’t do our duty, we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by lower pleasures e.g. being a couch potato and continuing to mindlessly watch tv or play a computer game instead of setting out to visit that sick relative.
But how do we know what our duties are? Here Kant is controversial. He believed that we could work this out for ourselves simply by using our ability to reason. First of all, we have to get clear about what the actual moral problem is eg. ‘Should I ________________(describe the moral issue you are trying to make a decision about)?’ This is what Kant called a maxim.
Having thought of our maxim, we should then, Kant argued, subject it to three tests to check whether it is moral or not. Kant described these tests as different formulations of what he called the ‘categorical imperative’, the duty to act in the correct and moral way.
The first of these tests is to universalise our action. If everyone acted this way, would the action be logical? Would it make sense? This version of the categorical imperative can be confusing, as it seems to be asking us to figure out what would happen if everyone did what we are thinking about doing. But Kantian ethics is not about ‘what would happen’. It is not about consequences. The test of universalisability is a test of logic not consequences.
For Kant, if you want to know whether what you are thinking of doing is morally right or wrong, imagining that everyone adopted and acted on the same maxim can help you to figure out whether the maxim is consistent or self-contradictory at that level. If the world that comes about from following the maxim is consistent, you are in no danger of doing the wrong thing. But if that world somehow breaks down, you are in violation of the moral law.
Think of it this way: if everybody made false promises, promising itself would become absurd. Who would believe in any promise that was made to them? The maxim you were considering (‘Make a promise without intending to keep it’) results in a contradiction: the very act of making a promise would undermine itself – and it would therefore not be in keeping with the categorical imperative. So you shouldn’t do it. This shows that Kant’s system depends on consistency, on the possibility of moral principles being applied in the same way every time, regardless of the consequences.
The second formulation of the categorical imperative involves checking to see whether we are treating people as ‘ends’ rather than a ‘means to an end’. In other words, are we using or manipulating anyone to get what we want? If we are, we are treating them as a ‘means’. So, someone on The Apprentice who co-operates with and behaves in a friendly manner towards a fellow contestant might be said to be using them because, in the end, they want to win the competition. Eventually, they will have to stab them in the back. Similarly, a male who seduces lots of women by making them believe that he loves them, is really treating then as a ‘means’ to sexual self-gratification, rather than as an ‘end’, someone worthy of respect.
The second formulation of the categorical imperative is admired because it includes the notion of human rights that utilitarians such as Bentham ignore. Simply because we are human and rational, we are entitled not to be badly treated by others. So this element of Kantian thinking appeals to people fighting for equality, like anti-racists or feminists.
The third formulation of the categorical imperative requires us to act as if we are making laws in a ‘Kingdom of Ends’. Really, this version of the categorical imperative reminds us of exactly who we have a duty to. For Kant, an ‘end’ is someone like us, someone rational and autonomous (capable of acting freely). If someone is like this, they are a member of the Kingdom of Ends’ and should be treated with respect. Animals are not considered to be members of this Kingdom because Kant did not consider them to be capable of being rational. So we can treat animals as ‘means’ and do what we want with them. But with humans, things are different. We have to respect our fellow human beings because they are capable of being rational. This third formulation of the categorical imperative also reminds us that we have to be responsible in our moral decision-making. We have to ‘step up to the plate’ as it were. Making us imagine that we are someone who gets to decide what the laws in our community are going to be, serves to remind us of our responsibilities.
Lastly, Kant also wrote that ‘ought implies can’. If our maxim passes all three of the tests just described it must be capable of being realistically performed by a moral agent. So for example, it might be my intention to end world poverty. And the maxim ‘It is morally right to try to end world poverty’ might conform with the three versions of the categorical imperative. But at the end of the day, none of us individually has the power and influence to end global poverty. So while it might be something we ought to do, it’s something we can’t actually achieve. So for Kant, we don’t have a duty to try. It might be nice to give to a charity that relieves poverty, though, and Kant would be in favour of performing moral acts that are possible.
Finally, Kant writes about the summum bonum, ‘the highest good’. This is something that he felt we might experience in the afterlife, when virtue and duty coincide and we get our reward for doing the right thing. Kant possibly mentions this because we often see people who get away with doing immoral things (Jimmy Savile springs to mind), while bad things happen to good people. So here, Kant is recognising the fact that our true happiness awaits us in the next world, when our virtuous observation of the categorical imperative will be recognised.
Comments
If we are at all interested in equality, and are opposed to things like racism, sexism and homophobia, then Kant’s views may appeal because he is quite clear that are entitled to be respected, simply because we are human and rational. Kant is therefore seen as being something of a champion of human rights.
On the other hand, it could be argued that respect has to be earned. It is not something that we are automatically entitled to. And one could add that the very worst kind of people, like terrorists or paedophiles deserve to forfeit their right to be treated as an ‘end’ because of the terrible things they do.
Kant has been further criticised on the grounds that he does not tell us what to do if two duties seem to conflict when we are trying to make a moral decision. For example, if an innocent person is hiding from a would-be murderer in our home and we have promised not to tell the murderer where that person is if they show up, then if we do find the murderer on our doorstep, which duty should take priority, our duty to keep a promise or our duty to tell the truth?
Also, Kant discounts emotions. They have no part to play in moral decision making. But surely the strong feelings of affection for our friends and family, and the compassion that the suffering of others arouses in us count for something. If so, then Kant may be achieving moral consistency in his system of ethics but at the price of our humanity. Moreover, Kant seems to place feelings on a level playing field, whereas it could be argued that feelings such as love and compassion are to be more valued than, say, the ‘buzz’ we get from going clubbing, or eating chocolate.
On the other hand, it could be said that if you are not an especially pleasant person to begin with, if you are not someone full of love for your friends, family and fellow human beings, then Kantian ethics still offers you a chance to be moral simply by doing your duty anyway.
Another criticism of Kant is that there are maxims we can think of that may fail the test of universalisability but which still make sense morally. Take the maxim, ‘One ought to wear a condom to stop the spread of sexually transmitted infections.’ This seems logical and reasonable, but if universalised consistently, the human race would eventually die out because there would be no pregnancies.
Yet another issue with Kant is that he does not acknowledge that animals can be rational and part of his ‘Kingdom of Ends’. But as we have seen, chimpanzees have been taught to use ASL (American Sign Language) to communicate successfully and African Grey Parrots have also been shown to have a similar level of reasoning power, roughly comparable to that of a two year old human infant. Utilitarians at least admit that animals can feel pleasure and pain, and so have some kind of moral status because of this.
In summary, it could be argued that both Kantian ethics and utilitarianism both suffer from serious problems that make neither ethical system viable as a theory.