Archetypes of Wisdom
Douglas J. Soccio
Chapter 11
The Universalist: Immanuel Kant
Learning Objectives
On completion of this chapter, you should be able to answer
the following questions:
What is the difference between
“nonmoral” and “immoral”?
What is Kantian formalism?
What is Critical Philosophy?
What are phenomenal and
noumenal reality?
What are practical reason and
theoretical reason?
What is a maxim? What makes
a maxim moral?
What is a hypothetical
imperative?
What is the “practical
imperative”?
What is a thought experiment?
What is the original position,
and how is it related to the “veil
of ignorance”?
The Professor
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in Königsberg in
what was then known as East Prussia (now Kaliningrad in
the former Soviet Union).
His parents were poor but devout members of a
fundamentalist Protestant sect known as Pietism, living
severe, puritanical lives.
At the age of sixteen, Kant entered the University of
Königsberg.
In 1755, he received the equivalent of today’s doctoral
degree.
He became a popular lecturer, and in 1770, the university
hired him as a professor of logic and mathematics.
The Solitary Writer
Kant’s life is noteworthy for not being noteworthy, never
traveling more than sixty miles from his birthplace, and
living with a regularity that people in his town could “set
their watches by.”
But Kant was a prolific writer. His works include:
The Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
Critique of Judgment (1790)
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)
A Scandal in Philosophy
Kant was one of the first thinkers to fully realize the
consequences of Hume’s relentless attack on the scope of
reason.
However, the seeds of what Kant referred to as a “scandal”
in philosophy were planted when Descartes doubted his
own existence and divided everything into two completely
distinct substances – minds and bodies.
Kant felt something was drastically wrong if the two
major schools (rationalism and empiricism) denied
knowledge of cause and effect, denied existence of the
external world, and rendered reason impotent in human
affairs – while the science of the day clearly showed
otherwise.
Transcendental Idealism
In response to this “scandal,” Kant turned to an analysis
(or critique) of how knowledge is possible.
In the process, he posited an underlying structure imposed
by the mind on the sensations and perceptions it
encounters.
The theory he developed, transcendental idealism,
claims that knowledge is the result of the interaction
between the mind and sensation.
Experience is shaped, or structured, by special regulative
ideas called categories.
Kant’s Copernican Revolution
What Kant was proposing challenged assumptions about
thought, in the same way Copernicus challenged
assumptions about the universe.
Kant suggested that instead of mind having to conform to
what can be known, what can be known must conform to
the mind.
Phenomena and Noumena
For Kant, our knowledge is formed by two things: our
actual experiences and the mind’s faculties of judgment.
This means that we cannot know reality as it is, but only as
it is organized by human reason.
Kant’s term for the world as we perceive it is phenomenal
reality. His term for reality as it is independent of our
perceptions – what we commonly call “objective reality” –
is noumenal reality.
Although we never experience pure reality, we can know
that our minds do not just invent the world.
Our minds impose order on the world, and that order is
what Kant is trying to make explicit.
Transcendental Ideas
Though we cannot directly experience noumena, a class of
transcendental ideas bridges the gap between things as we
experience them and things as they are in themselves.
Kant identified three transcendental ideas:
Self
Cosmos (totality)
God
These ideas create the unity and objectivity of your
experience of yourself as “you” (in a world of sensation
created by some higher intelligence).
These transcendental ideas regulate and synthesize
experience on a grand scale.
Theoretical and Practical Reason
Although there is only one faculty of understanding, Kant
distinguishes two functions of reason: theoretical and
practical.
Theoretical reasoning is confined to the world of
experience, and concludes that human beings, like all
phenomena, are governed by cause and effect in the form
of the inescapable laws of nature.
Practical reasoning enables us to move beyond the
phenomenal world to the moral dimension, helps us to deal
with the moral freedom provided by free will, and
produces religious feelings and intuitions.
The Moral Law Within
Kant notes that very few people consistently think of their
own moral judgments as mere matters of custom or taste.
Whether we actually live up to our moral judgments or not,
we think of them as concerned with how people ought to
behave.
Just as we cannot think or experience without assuming the
principle of cause and effect, Kant thought we cannot
function without a sense of duty.
The Moral Law Within
Our practical reason imposes this notion of ought on us.
For Kant, morality is a function of reason, based on our
consciousness of necessary and universal laws.
Since necessary and universal laws must be a priori, they
cannot be discovered in actual behavior.
The moral law is a function of reason, a component of how
we think.
The Good Will
It is important to note that Kant conceives of the good will
as a component of rationality, the only thing which is
“good in itself.”
Kant argues that “ought implies can” – by which he means
it must be possible for human beings to live up to their
moral obligations (since circumstances can prevent us from
doing the good we want to do).
Thus, Kant reasons, I must not be judged on the
consequences of what I actually do, but on my reasons.
Put another way, morality is a matter of motives.
As Kant himself said, “Morality is not properly the
doctrine of how we should make ourselves happy, but how
we should become worthy of happiness.”
Inclinations
In Kantian terminology, decisions and actions are based on
impulse or desire – or inclinations.
Inclinations are unreliable and inconstant, and so not what
morality should be based on.
Inclinations are not produced by reason. Animals act from
inclination, not from will.
In contrast to inclinations, acts of will reflect autonomy,
the capacity to choose clearly and freely for ourselves,
without “outside” coercion or interference.
Moral Duty
Kant says, “Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for
the moral law.”
Duty does not serve our desires and preferences, but,
rather, overpowers them.
Such moral duty cannot be based on what an individual
wants to do, what he or she likes or doesn’t like, or
whether or not the individual cares about the people
involved.
Kant’s Imperatives
Imperatives are forms of speech that command
someone, or tell them what to do.
Kant distinguishes two types of imperatives:
hypothetical and categorical.
Hypothetical imperatives tell us what to do under
specific, variable conditions.
They take the form, “If this, then do that.”
The Categorical Imperative
Categorical imperatives tells us what to do in order for
our act to have moral worth.
They take the form, “Do this.”
The categorical imperative is universally binding on all
rational creatures, and this alone can guide the good will
(which summons our powers to obey such an imperative).
The categorical imperative says, “Act as if the maxim of
thy action were to become a universal law of nature.”
In other words, we must act only according to principles
we think should apply to everyone.
The Kingdom of Ends
Kant believed that as conscious, rational creatures, we each
possess intrinsic worth, a special moral dignity that always
deserves respect.
In other words, we are more than mere objects to be used
to further this or that end.
Kant formulates the categorical imperative around the
concept of dignity – sometimes referred to as the practical
imperative.
The Kingdom of Ends
As Kant explains, “Act in such a way that you always treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of
another, never merely as a means but always at the same
time as an end.”
To describe the universe of all moral beings, Kant uses the
expression,“kingdom of ends.”
By this, Kant means a kingdom whose creatures possess
intrinsic worth, in which everyone is an end in himself or
herself.
The Metaphysics of Morals
Kant describes the metaphysics of morals as the
transcendental realm that is universal and necessary for all
creatures that are rational.
The metaphysics of morals include:
the transcendental ideas (of self, cosmos, and God)
the division of reality into phenomena and noumena
the moral law and duty our good wills have to abide
by
the categorical imperatives that ought to override our
inclinations
the kingdom of ends to which we all respectfully
belong
A Kantian Theory of Justice
John Rawls relies upon some fundamental insights of
Kant’s to generate a very powerful theory of justice.
Rawls begins with a thought experiment known as the
original position to justify two basic principles of justice.
Rawls asks his readers to imagine that they are to found a
society.
What principles of justice would be chosen to regulate it?
Principles chosen behind a “veil of ignorance” would be
objective and impartial, and therefore, justified.
A Kantian Theory of Justice
Rawls argues that ultimately two principles would be
chosen:
1) Everyone has an equal right to “the most extensive
basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for
others.”
2) Any social and economic inequalities must be such
that “they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to
everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and
offices open to all.”
What about Family Justice?
Susan Moller Okin argues that Rawls’s theory of justice
contains gender biases in both the language and choice of
examples.
For example, Rawls does not provide an analysis of justice
within the family.
According to Okin, “Family justice must be of central
importance for social justice.”
What about Family Justice?
Okin analyzes Rawls’s theory of justice with special
attention to issues of gender and the family.
According to Okin, Rawls’s analysis of justice is
problematic because he rarely indicates “how deeply and
pervasively gender-structured” society is.
As Okin notes, “A feminist reader finds it difficult not to
keep asking, ‘Does this theory apply to women?’”
Discussion Questions
How can we get a clearer sense of the power of the
categorical imperative in order to clarify the nature of
various forms of behavior?
Formulate and then analyze the maxims that are required to
justify contemporary issues in society, such as the
following:
Having unprotected sex without knowing if you are
HIV positive.
Forcing schools to teach the values of your religion.
Chapter Review:
Key Concepts and Thinkers
Moral
Nonmoral (amoral)
Immoral
Kantian formalism
Critical philosophy
Phenomenal reality
Noumenal reality
Theoretical reason
Practical reason
Hypothetical imperative
Categorical imperative
Practical imperative
Principle of dignity
Thought experiment
Original position
Veil of ignorance
John Rawls (1921-2002)
Susan Moller Okin (1946-2004)