Kant on Morality

“Finally, there is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately...This imperative is Categorical...This imperative may be called that of Morality.”

-Immanuel Kant

(Fundamental Principles of Metaphysics of Ethics)

To really understand morality, there some questions that should be answered. How can duty and autonomy go together? What’s the great nobility in answering to duty? It seems that the idea of duty and the idea of autonomy are opposing. How can these two matters be related with each other?

You only act autonomously when you’re pursuing in the name of duty and not of your own condition. You are doing good and moral only because of duty and not because of your own personal benefit. This is acting out of freedom because you choose to accept the moral laws on yourself and not brought out from outside and onto you. Because doing something out of duty is following a moral law that you impose on yourself. For this reason, I may say duty may be connected with autonomy or freedom.

So Kant’s answer would be - it is not that I am subject to the law that I have dignity. But rather, in so far as with regard to that same law that I’m the author. And I am under that law on that grounds that I took upon myself. So acting because of duty and acting autonomously would be the same.

But the question is how many moral laws are there? And if dignity is based in being governed by the law that I give myself, how can I be sure that my conscience or way of thinking will be the same as yours?

Because moral law does not depend upon subjective conditions, it may go beyond our personal differences. Thus, a universal law will form. So there will only be one moral law that will be the same for everyone. So this means that if we choose freely out of our own conscience the moral law will come up with only one and same law. This may be because of pure reason which is not subject to any external conditions that may be implied to us. Because when I choose, it is not Bea who chooses. And when you choose, it is you who is choosing but pure reason. So the “pure reason” that does the commanding when I command the moral law is the same pure reason that commands when you choose the moral law for yourself. And that’s why it is possible for everyone to act freely in choosing for ourselves as autonomous beings and to come up willing one same moral law (categorical imperative).

Now, how is categorical imperative possible? How is morality possible?

Kant mentioned that we need to set the distinctions between two standpoints.

1.      Sensible world – where actions are determined by the laws of nature and by the regulations of cause and effects

2.      Intelligible world – where by being independent by the laws of nature, I am capable of autonomy, capable of acting according to a law I give to myself

Kant says, “...only from this 2^nd standpoint can I regard myself as free. For to be independent in determination by conscience in a sensible world is to be free.”

If I were a holy and independent being, only subject to the deliverances of my senses – love, pain, happiness, thirst, appetite. If that’s all to humanity we wouldn’t be capable of freedom. Kant reasons because in that case, every exercise of will would be condition by the desire for some object.

“When we think of ourselves as free, we transfer ourselves into the intelligible world as members and recognize the autonomy of the will.” 

So how are categorical imperatives possible? Kant admits we aren’t only rational beings, we don’t only inhabit intelligible world around our freedom because if we do, then all of our actions would customarily be in accordance with the autonomy of the will. But because we inhabit both standpoints, there is always a gap between what we do and what we ought to do. At this point, Kant clarifies that morality is not empirical. Whatever there is to discover cannot decide on morality which is why science can’t provide a moral truth.

Bea Obcena :)