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Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment. In common with other thinkers like Condorcet, Kant seeks a rational politics, one in which the principles of public life (as well as the principles of individual morality) would fully reflect the claims of reason, and he believes that a constitutional republic which respected human rights and freedom was required. Unlike Condorcet, Kant does not think that the natural sciences provide an adequate model for moral and political knowledge. The natural sciences provide an understanding of the phenomenal world of matter and energy, a world governed by the causal laws of physics and the other sciences. Morality, however, presupposes freedom, the capacity of agents to choose between right and wrong. Without such a capacity, the whole idea of moral responsibility and judgment, would be empty; indeed, the very notion of morality (or political theory) as providing the rules which we should use to decide what to do presupposes that we have decisions to make, that we have choices. Practical reason, then, cannot simply be a branch of natural science, since it has a fundamentally different object.

Kant seeks to ground basic moral and political principles in reason: not to accept any contingent starting point for morality such as valuing one's own life and well-being and accepting equality (Locke), or moral "sense" or feeling (Hutcheson). To begin moral philosophy with some given, empirical end can yield moral rules or norms only for those people who happen to hold the end in question. In Kant's terminology, this strategy can give us only hypothetical imperatives, rules telling us how we must act if we want to achieve a certain end. For example, Hobbes's natural laws are hypothetical imperatives; he calls them convenient articles of peace. They are of the form, "if you wish peace, then you must be prepared to...." For Kant this is unsatisfactory. He distinguishes moral action from non-moral action precisely on the grounds that the former involves acting on nothing but the claims of reason. Thus, he rejects the commonly offered justification for being honest, namely that "Honesty is the best policy," because whether it is or not depends upon what our goals are, and what situations we find ourselves in. Sometimes it will pay to be dishonest. For Kant, then, if honesty is morally required, it must be required categorically: "Thou shalt not lie – period!" (or, as Kant puts it, “Honesty is better than any policy” (p. 116)).

Kant seeks what he calls a categorical imperative: a norm that is binding on us, and on all rational agents, irrespective of the particular ends we seek, or our particular situations, aims, or beliefs. The categorical imperative is entirely objective, so to speak, for it does not depend upon anything that pertains merely to a particular subject, such as the values one holds and the loyalties one feels. Indeed, it doesn't even depend upon one's being a human being since it applies to all rational agents. If someone like R2D2 existed (or comes to exist), the categorical imperative would apply to it as well.

To make sense of the idea of one's actions being determined by reason as opposed, say, to desire or inclination, one may begin by thinking about autonomy, which is a necessary presupposition of moral action. To grasp the idea of autonomy, consider the opposite idea, determinism. People have sometimes argued that social conditions together with the socialization experiences of a person determine the person's desires, which in turn determine one's actions. For example, it is might be said that the reason someone committed a crime is that he was abused as a child. If this is a true account of human action, Kant argues, we never really have any choices to make, and so we are never responsible for what we "do." In such a world, he argues, there can be no such thing as morality; morality would not have any point, for we would have no choices, and so no need for morality to guide our choices. Thus, if morality is to be possible, we must think of human beings as capable of free activity. But where could such freedom come from? Kant's answer: from the fact that we are rational beings (in addition to beings with desires, habits, etc.), that is, from reason, which gives us the moral law.

In his Critique of Practical Reason Kant gives us an example of what he has in mind by this argument:

Suppose that someone says his lust is irresistible when the desired object and opportunity are present. Ask him whether he would not control his passion if, in front of the house where he has this opportunity, a gallows were erected on which he would be hanged immediately after gratifying his lust. We do not have to guess very long what his answer would be. But ask him whether he thinks it would be possible for him to overcome his love of life, however great it may be, if his sovereign threatened him with the same sudden death unless he made a false deposition against an honorable man whom the ruler wished to destroy under a plausible pretext. Whether he would or not, he perhaps will not venture to say; but that it would be possible for him he would certainly admit without hesitation. He judges, therefore, that he can do something because he knows that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free – a fact which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him. (p. 30)

What Kant is saying is that even our strongest passion – the love of life – can be overcome by the moral law, and so we know that we are free. (This idea of freedom is similar to Rousseau's notion of "moral freedom," and the idea of "positive freedom" more generally.)

What is the moral law? What is the categorical imperative? There are a number of different ways of understanding what Kant had in mind; one useful way is to think about it as a way of testing whether a proposed action is morally permissible. Any action can be characterized in terms of a certain "maxim" to which it conforms, or which expresses the point or purpose of the action. For example, if I am thirsty and want to drink some water, the maxim of my proposed action might be expressed as, "When I am thirsty, let me drink water." The categorical imperative can be thought of as a device to test the "maxims" of our actions, and only those actions are morally permissible whose maxims are consistent with the categorical imperative.^{^[1]}

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

So act that the will through its maxim could at the same time regard itself as legislating universally.

So act that you treat humanity in your own person and in the person of everyone else at the same time as an end and never merely as a means.

Every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxims always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.

All of these formulations are different versions of the fundamental moral law. All are categorical imperatives. They focus on somewhat different aspects of moral duty, but should be thought of as different ways of saying the same thing.

These imperatives are seen as in some ways involving an appeal to the principle of non- contradiction. It is this which makes these laws or imperatives rationally necessary.

The Principle of Universal Law: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. In another version, "Act so that the maxim of your will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation."

The "maxim" of your action is a statement of what you're trying to accomplish in performing the action. The rationality of your action can be tested in two ways. First, we can ask whether it is rational to suppose that doing what you propose to do will in fact achieve the purpose or the point of the action. This involves what we have been calling "instrumental rationality," which is what Hobbes takes practical reason (reason applied to practice, to what we do) to be. Second, we can ask whether the maxim of the action conforms to a universal law. That is, we can ask whether there could be a (set of) universal law(s) which would permit the performance of this action? (This involves the idea of "reasonableness" that we talked about when we discussed Locke in Social Theory.) The basic notion behind the principle of universal law has been called the principle of universalization. The idea is that actions that violate this principle are self-contradictory in some way.

An example of such a self-contradiction is a lying promise. A lying promise involves a contradiction between the public statement of one's intention and the private statement of it. What it means to make a promise is to commit oneself to something, but a lying promise is self-contradictory because one is both committing oneself to doing something and denying the commitment at the same time. A second example is stealing. The maxim of one’s action when one is going to steal something might be expressed as something like this: when it is to your advantage, you may take the property of another. But what it means to call something the property of another is that one may not take it (without permission). Thus, the maxim is self-contradictory: it amounts to saying one may take something and one may not take it.

This kind of argument depends critically upon the way in which the action – or the maxim of the action – is described. Suppose that we said, in the case of stealing, that the maxim was:

This maxim may not appear to lead to self-contradiction when it is universalized because the object taken is not described as property. The crucial point is that "property" is constituted by certain rules, and so maxims involving stealing contradict those rules. But if we describe what we are doing as "taking what someone possesses" rather than "taking someone's property," it might be thought, our actions would be consistent with a set of universal laws, in particular, a system of laws that did not establish a right to property.

To make this clear, consider the distinction between two types of rules: constitutive vs. regulative.

constitutive: a set of rules that constitute a certain manner of activity, institution, action. For example, property, promising, scoring a touchdown – all are things that are constituted by certain rules. Outside of these rules, so to speak, they could not occur.

regulative rules: rules which regulate an already established, on-going set of activities. E.g., rules of proper eating behavior.^{^[3]}

Kant's argument works well with regard to maxims that violate constitutive rules, because in these cases the maxim directly violates the rules that constitute the practice in question. This is not insignificant: consider slavery (thought of as a moral institution, that is, one in which slaves are seen to have duties or responsibilities). The slave, then, has a duty to obey his master in whatever action the master prescribes. To be subject to duties, however, is to be a moral agent (we do not think of cats, for example, as having duties). To be a moral agent, though, is to be responsible for one's own acts, to be autonomous. But to be autonomous is not compatible with unquestioning obedience. Thus, slavery is self-contradictory.

Similarly, truthfulness can be shown to be a constitutive norm of language. The universalization of lying would destroy the medium of communication, language, which is necessary to lying.

The maxim, "when to one's advantage, you may take the property of another" employs the concept “property,” which is constituted by certain rules which directly contradict the statement of the maxim itself, making the maxim self-contradictory. But even if we substitute a maxim that does not employ such concepts, such as "when to one's advantage, you may take the possessions of another," the maxim is still not universalizable. One could not will that maxim to be a universal law because doing so would defeat the point of the maxim, as there would then be nothing to take. When universalized, such maxims are self-defeating because they destroy the very institution whose existence is required if the action in question is to have a point. The most common kind of actions that are ruled out by the test of universalization are those where the agent wishes to make an exception in his or her own case, that is, not to conform to rules which he or she wishes others to obey.

Many have criticized Kantian morality on the ground that universalization is a purely formal requirement. There may be cases where someone proposes despicable courses of action that don't involve making an exception in one's own case, where the agent fully universalizes the behavior in question. Indeed, in some cases the agent may believe that he or she is acting conscientiously, and is prepared to make significant sacrifices of his or her own interests in order to carry out the proposed maxim. The example that is often used to illustrate this point is the "conscientious Nazi." So long as the agent is prepared to apply the rules to himself or herself (e.g., willing that one be expelled from the country or even destroyed if it turns out that one had non-Aryan ancestors), then the action would seem to fit with the first formulation of the CI.

This is one of the oldest criticisms of Kant's theory – that the categorical imperative is "merely formal" and so permits heinous actions to be performed so long as the individual does not try to make exceptions in his or her own case. This criticism can be countered by appealing to the third formulation of the categorical imperative, the Principle of Personality:

So act that you treat humanity in your own person and in the person of everyone else at the same time as an end and never merely as a means.

This notion is not entirely clear, but I think we can get at what it means by considering the difference between a thing and a person. The essential difference is that a person has reasons for what he or she does. People are agents whose actions reflect their choices. Things have no purposes, no value in themselves. They serve merely as the "stuff" onto which we may impose our own purposes. For example, we may transform various materials into a building, or a tool. Thus, to treat someone as a person is to act towards that person on the basis of his or her own choices and actions – not to impose one's own purposes on him or her.

A paradigmatic denial of personhood is the taking of hostages. When people are used as hostages, they are treated purely as things. Our actions towards hostages are not determined by what they do or have done, but by someone else, whose behavior we are trying to influence by threatening to harm the hostages. Hostages are treated simply as objects someone happens to value, not as agents in their own right. (A more exotic example is cannibalism.)

There is a connection between universalization and the principle of personality, in that actions violating the former will involve the exploitation and manipulation of others, which the agent would not be prepared to accept if done to himself or herself. Lying promises are paradigmatic; when I make a lying promise, I induce someone to do something for me that the person would not do if he or she understood my true intentions.

But the principle of personality seems to go beyond mere universalization in seeing persons as sources of value in their own right. The principle of personality requires that the dignity of each person be respected. It requires that we respect the freedom of rational beings (including humans who are imperfectly rational), and so makes rational freedom a necessary end of moral life. Now in what way can we justify freedom as a necessary end? Why should one respect the freedom of rational beings?

To answer this question we must go back to the distinction between persons and things – to freedom or autonomy as what separates us and distinguishes us from the rest of nature. I see myself as free and value autonomy in myself, for I recognize that I can make choices and cannot experience my own choices as determined. My valuing of my own autonomy is expressed when I make claims against others or when I form my own projects. When I call upon others to treat me in a certain way, to respect my choices, I assert the value of my own freedom. In choosing some project I show myself to be a person who is capable of setting his or her own ends, rather than a thing on which ends can be imposed, and so I at least implicitly affirm the value of my own autonomy.

But in demanding that others respect my choices and in choosing some project, I must also recognize that others are capable of autonomy, and so respect that autonomy in them. Thus, autonomy is a rational end, a necessary value for a rational being.

This idea of autonomy is crucial to Kant's argument, and requires some elaboration. According to Kant, we act autonomously only when we obey the moral law: otherwise, we act heteronomously. Why does Kant say this, and what does it mean? It surely is not obviously true. The answer, I think, is that autonomy is tied up with the idea of reason. It is because we have reason that we can be free: "for freedom (as it first becomes known to us...) is known only as a negative property within us, the property of not being constrained to action by any sensible determining grounds" (Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, p. 27). But how do we come to know that we are free in this sense, that we can overcome desires and other factors that constrain our actions? We know this through knowing the moral law, which we know as a dictate of reason, in this case, of practical reason. Recall Kant's example of a person who is able to resist some great temptation only because he knows that if he succumbs, he will immediately afterwards be killed.^{^[4]} According to Kant, that same person, even under the threat of death, knows that it would be possible for him or her to refuse to do some heinous thing. Because I come to see the power of reason to determine my will in this way, even in the face of overwhelming desire, I know that I am free, that I am not completely determined by my desires and inclinations.

To say that I am free when I act according to reason is not to say that autonomous action is always opposed to desire – that if I do something that I want to do, I am not an autonomous agent, but act heteronomously. I only act heteronomously when I act against the requirements of reason, when I pursue the satisfaction of desires without regard for the requirements of reason or morality.

It is because I am a being who is capable of reason that I am distinguished from other animals (let alone plants or rocks). And I act freely (as opposed to being determined by natural forces, socialization, etc.), when I act according to reason, which is say, according to the moral law. In obeying the moral law, I am acting on a principle I accept for myself. I am not, for example, obeying out of fear, or out of hope for reward. Thus, I am free in obeying the moral law, not in acting heteronomously. My action is not dictated by something external to myself, something merely given or contingent. There is then, a deep connection between reason and freedom. And since reason is universal, when I act according to reason I act both autonomously and in ways that other reasonable beings could accept. This is expressed in the principle of autonomy,

So act that the will through its maxim could at the same time regard itself as legislating universally.

That is, if my actions are governed by reason, then the maxims on which they are based (or which they express) must be acceptable to other rational agents. Thus, I am legislating universally in the sense that I am prescribing and acting on rules that are or at least could be accepted by all. The moral law is actively willed by all rational agents and is regarded by each as a law that he or she should submit to. But if this is the case, then they are laws that would be recognized as just and proper by everyone. Because everyone finds them acceptable, these rules would recognize the autonomy and dignity of each person, are so would be consistent with the principle of personality.

This leads to the fourth formulation of the categorical imperative, The Kingdom of Ends Formula:

Every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxims always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.

This formulation directs us to adopt maxims or principles of conduct that are suitable for harmonizing the ends or purposes of all rational creatures. In our case, as human beings, we must harmonize our ends with those of all other humans.

Kant calls these categorical imperatives the "laws of freedom," and we can see what he means by distinguishing three senses in which they involve freedom:

1. They take freedom as an end to be realized. This is expressed most clearly in the principle of personality.

2. They are expressions of our autonomy as rational beings, our ability to rise above necessity or the determination of our actions by desire, social conditioning, etc.

3. They serve to make a system of freedom possible by constraining each person by the freedom of others.

If you accept this argument, then Kant's position has much more content than merely the requirement of universalization. It not only rules out the conscientious Nazi, but it leads to an important political ideal – the idea of a society in which every member respects every other member, and in which all laws are those which everyone recognizes to be reasonable. This is a society in which everyone has a right to freedom as a fundamental right. This idea is expressed in the Universal Principle of Right:

Every action which by itself or by its maxim enables the freedom of each individual's will to co-exist with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law is right.

The key to Kant's view of politics is the elimination of force in human relationships, substituting justice for force in determining the outcomes of disputes. Unlike others, Kant insists that the elimination of violence is necessary not only domestically, but also internationally (Perpetual Peace). Kant's fundamental claim is that law is to be governed by the universal principle of right, which means that people cannot be prohibited from performing actions that are consistent with this principle. Thus, it establishes a fundamental, natural (in the sense of not depending upon positive law, but prior to and governing positive law) right of freedom or liberty. This fundamental right Kant glosses in "Theory and Practice"^{^[5]} as involving three principles on which the lawful state is based:

3. the right to be self-dependent, that is, to the autonomous exercise of the will.

Thus, Kant argues that no one may be bound by laws which one has not made (or, at least) participated in making. This idea, which today we see as the heart of the idea of democracy, is central to a tradition of political theorizing known as “republicanism.” For most thinkers before the 19^th century, “democracy” was a suspect, corrupt type of government. Those who supported the idea of popular government (one in which authority derives from the people and in which those who make the laws are accountable to the people) called themselves republicans, for a republic – as opposed to a monarchy – is a political system in which authority ultimately rests with the people. Kant's republicanism is indebted to Rousseau, though unlike Rousseau he accepts representation. Note that the key to “republican” government according to Kant is the separation of legislative and executive power, and that the legislative be accountable to the people.

Unfortunately, however desirable republican government is, or moral behavior more generally, Kant recognizes that people do not always act in the way they should. They do not always follow moral principles, and political systems are often despotic. We often follow our desires and inclinations, or act out of habit, or conform unthinkingly to the customs of our society or the edicts of our superiors. We are, in short, unenlightened. As human beings acting in the world, we are subject to the laws of science, in which events are explainable in terms of the causal forces that bring them about. As rational agents, however, we are capable of choice, of determining our behavior according to the moral law or reason. Can these two features of our nature be reconciled? How can we be both part of the causal chains of the natural world, and yet free to determine our own actions?

We will not be spending enough time on Kant in this class to provide anything like a full answer to this question, but his basic notion is presented in his Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. Let us think of nature, Kant seems to suggest, as having a purpose which is realized over time in history. Since what is distinctive to humanity is our capacity for reason, we can suppose that the purpose is the realization of this capacity, the creation of conditions within which humans can be rational (and so self-legislating) beings. In human affairs these conditions include a constitutional, republican order which respects human rights, which thus must be the goal of history (see p. 36ff.). It is important to stress that Kant does not claim that there is someone or some Being called "nature" who has set things up in a certain way so that constitutional republics will eventually be set up everywhere. Rather, we should think of this goal as a kind of hypothesis, which we can use to make sense of the pattern and direction of historical change. We could never prove that the purpose of history is the realization of human freedom, but without this Idea, history would be unintelligible, Kant argues. (An analogy might be helpful. We often explain biological phenomena in teleological terms, as when we say that the function or purpose of the heart is to circulate the blood. If we think of the whole of nature as, in a sense, a great organism, then we could explain specific phenomena in terms of the ways in which they contribute to the whole.)

If the goal of history is the realization of freedom, then we can reconcile the simultaneous participation of humans in natural processes governed by causal laws and in the moral world, governed by reason. But this vision requires that we specify the causal processes through which reason comes to be realized in the world. Human history is marked, Kant argues, by deep and pervasive conflicts, conflicts often driven by selfish interests and leading to actions that, to say the least, are not compatible with the moral law. On the face of it, one might think, this condition offers evidence against Kant's hypothesis. How can we talk about the realization of reason in a world of violence? Kant attempts to turn this apparent anomaly into evidence for his view, arguing that it is our very "unsocial sociability" that drives history forward. In the end, only a cosmopolitan culture and an international order in which war has been abolished will be adequate: our unsocial sociability drives us forward but in the process it is itself overcome. As Kant makes clear in “What is Enlightenment?”, he believed that the process of enlightenment was moving forward, but that society had not yet reached its final stage.

One way of seeing what is distinctive to Kantian, or rights-based approaches to morality and politics, particularly compared to utilitarianism is to consider the issue of punishment. This is one of the areas where advocates of rights are most critical of utilitarians, for it is here that the individual is apparently treated as a means, and not as an end in himself or herself. In deterrence, for example, the justification for punishment of a particular type and degree is not its appropriateness to what the criminal did, but its effect in discouraging others from doing the same. This is an idea that Kant completely rejects:

Judicial punishment can never be merely a means of furthering some extraneous good for the criminal himself or for civil society, but must always be imposed on the criminal simply because he has committed a crime. For a human being can never be manipulated just as a means of realizing someone else's intentions, and is not to be confused with the objects of the law of kind [or "things"] (Sachenrecht)] (pp. 154-5).

1. the commission of a crime makes one deserving of punishment, so that the failure to punish someone is itself a crime. Why? What Kant is saying is that inflicting punishment a duty of the authorities. Why should this be so? To see why, suppose we test the decision not to punish a criminal against the categorical imperative. We would see then that leaving a crime unpunished would be to fail to correct an injustice. Those who had abided by the law and endured sacrifices would be unjustly disadvantaged compared to those who broke the law. They would receive the advantages of a system of law, without enduring its costs. Punishment, by removing this advantage by inflicting harm, restores a just distribution of advantages and disadvantages (or, at least, corrects one source of injustice). A maxim permitting criminal acts to go unpunished could not be universalized. Therefore it is a duty for those in authority to inflict punishment (even in cases where no deterrence would result). This means that the criminal can't be forgiven by, for example, allowing his body to be used in medical experiments. That would be to treat the criminal as a means to another's end, and to buy justice for a price.

2. For Kant, the law of retribution determines the kind and amount of punishment an act requires. Criminals should suffer in a way relevant to the norm that is broken. Thus, murderers should die. Thieves should be denied property, and so condemned to involuntary labor. But punishment should be inflicted "without any maltreatment which might make humanity an object of horror in the person of the sufferer" (p. 156) [alternate translation: "would make an abomination of the humanity residing in the person suffering it"]. Nor can the punishment be an act that would be a crime for someone to inflict it – as in the case of rape. But just why raping a rapist is a crime, while killing a murderer isn't, is not entirely clear. Kant proposes castration for rapists.

3. Nonetheless, under extreme circumstances failure to apply punishment may be excused.

^{^[1]}Some would argue that the CI specifies directly the content of our duties; rather than a screening device, it is said to function as a foundation for more specific moral rules. It's not obvious that these interpretations would yield substantively different results. Note that there are three categories in which actions may fall: obligatory or required, permitted, forbidden.

^{^[2]}These formulas are taken from H.B. Acton, Kant's Moral Philosophy.

^{^[3]}Note that this distinction is not altogether hard and fast. Are rules of proper eating regulative rules of eating, or constitutive rules of dining? Consider the difference between "feeding one's face" and "dining".

^{^[4]}See the discussion on p. 24, above.

^{^[5]}Section II, pp. 73ff. See also Perpetual Peace, second section, pp. 98ff.

Assignment: Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" (1784); "What is Enlightenment?" (1784); Perpetual Peace (1795), “The Right of Punishment,” (1797) pp. 154-60, in Kant's Political Writings.

1. Is a republican constitution necessary for justice and to secure international peace?

2. "In light of the events of the 20th century, the enlightenment faith in progress can only appear naive. Today, no one who reflects seriously about these matters can share their hopes. The progress of knowledge can and does go hand in hand with barbarism." Discuss.

4. Why does Kant say, "I can imagine a moral politician ... but I cannot imagine a political moralist ..." (p. 118)? Do you agree?

5. Why does Kant say, "... the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils (so long as they have understanding)" (p. 112)? Do you agree?

College of Social Studies

Sophomore Colloquium
Modern Social Theory

WEEK 6
(October 11-13)
Kant

College of Social Studies

Sophomore Colloquium Modern Social Theory

WEEK 6 (October 11-13) Kant

Sophomore Colloquium
Modern Social Theory

WEEK 6
(October 11-13)
Kant