Colena Sesanker. Philosophy Club. 12/2014
Kant on the Duty to Resist Being Oppressed
It is impossible to make sense of Kant’s moral recommendations without understanding his
metaphysics. The following is a rough sketch of his general picture of reality and of one moral
consequence of that picture:
According to Kant, if we took the world to be exhausted by the phenomena that appeared to our
senses, we would have no ability to account for the possibility of free will and moral responsibility.
Human action, viewed as mere events in the physical world, have physical explanations which, in
virtue of the fact that events are caused by prior conditions, reveal that there never was the
possibility of genuine choice. We appear to be mere machines playing out the domino chain of
events that began at the inception of time. Any sense in which we can be said to be responsible for
our actions, on the resources of a view like this, is unsatisfying. Yet, we retain the conviction that we
are free and the determiners of our fate.
Kant’s explanation for this is that the features of the world itself outrun our capacity to understand
it. The world as we are capable of experiencing it (he calls this the phenomenal world), is just a
portion of the world as it really is out there (he calls this the noumenal world). We, as entities, are
part of the real world which we only incompletely understand. As a result, we possess abilities
which are beyond our powers of comprehension.
There is direct access to the laws governing the world that we only partially access through the
senses, however. This direct access to the so-called noumenal world of raw data through our
capacity of rationality provides us with access to knowledge of what he claims is universal moral law.
This knowledge allows us to attain freedom by acting as legislators over ourselves; by imposing this
moral law on ourselves, we exercise our capacity for freedom. Acting according to universal moral
law because we choose to do our duty just IS what it is to be free. And anyone with such a capacity
is deemed of ultimate and inherent worth.
Anyone with the capacity of free will is in a position to be held responsible for their actions and the
moral status of one’s actions is ultimately determined, for Kant, by measuring it against the universal
moral standard we access through our rational capacity: the Categorical Imperative. The Categorical
Imperative is, just as advertised, categorical. There are no circumstances in which it does not
hold. There are no scenarios in which one is excused from one’s moral duty, no matter how difficult
it might be. The CI is formulated in three distinct, but functionally equivalent, ways. The three ways
provide different perspectives from which to check one’s actions against the very same standard. I
will focus here on the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative- it has come to be known as
the Humanity Formulation of the Categorical Imperative. It is:
For all rational beings come under the law that each of them must treat itself and all others never
merely as a means but in every case at the same time as ends in themselves
I take this to be the primary formulation of the Categorical Imperative1.
1
This is not typical. Ask me about it if you want to know more. All I’ll give here to keep it short is an empty appeal to authority: Allen
Wood and Donagan agree with me on this point and with taking Kant, as a result to read a bit more like a Virtue theorist than we have
traditionally read him.
Colena Sesanker. Philosophy Club. 12/2014
With this background, the following argument can be constructed from Kantian resources2:
1. We ought to assert our self-respect categorically
[by Humanity Formulation of the CI]
2. If self-respect is incompatible with complicity in our own oppression, then we ought to resist
our own oppression
[on most (all?) definitions of oppression, this is the case]
3. ought implies can
[Kant in religion beyond the bounds of mere reason 6:50 and
Critique of Pure Reason]
4. Suicide is not an option
[by the humanity formula, Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals]
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5. No matter what the circumstances, we can and must always resist being oppressed.
This argument suggests that IF one is capable of freedom and is therefore of ultimate and inherent
worth, nothing can strip that status away. Even when the world refuses to acknowledge that worth,
even when it seems that circumstances might have reduced us to the status of a mere animals, our
worth and freedom remains. This is quite hopeful.
However, if freedom remains in spite of our constraints, so does responsibility. In virtue of being a
moral agent, one can never, no matter how dire the circumstances, escape the responsibility of
respecting one’s self as well as all of humanity generally. There are no circumstances, according to
Kant which can relieve us of this moral burden. Such a responsibility may seem to unfairly burden
the oppressed.
2
I will focus for now only on the responsibility that we have to ourselves. We also have a responsibility to others…this will raise the stakes
for the kinds of actions we are thereby responsible for engaging in