KANT'S MORAL AXIOMS

 Marian Hillar 

Abstract 

Introduction

   Kant's work written in 1785, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,[ii] is one of the most important in the history of ethical philosophy. Kant begins with the classification of our rational knowledge (Table 1). Kant was not interested in constructing a system or writing a casuistry of morals, but searched for an axiom which might be used for building a general  system of laws of freedom (in contrast to the laws of nature, concerned with the nature), the science of which he called ethics or theory of morals.  Just as natural philosophy (physics) has its empirical part so does moral philosophy because it has to determine the human will as it is affected by nature.  Kant calls this anthropology.  Thus the laws of moral philosophy are those according to which everything should happen, allowing for conditions under which what should happen often does not.   Though the title contains the word metaphysics it is not about the understanding of ultimate reality, or metaphysics of nature, but a rigorous search for an establishment of the supreme principle of a possible pure will which cannot be derived from observations of actual behavior of men but can be established by reason.

PART  I

A. Condition of morality

   Kant starts his considerations with analysis of the conditions for attaining happiness -- namely of being worthy to be happy i.e. of having a good will.  Our moral obligation in the Greek and Judaic traditions is to achieve this "purity of heart" or "kingdom of God," which means good will.  "Nothing in the world -- indeed nothing even beyond the world -- can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will."   The function of reason is the establishment of this good will.  The good will is good because of its willing, that is, it is good in itself without  regard to anything else.  In saying this Kant describes nothing other than  the common moral consciousness and derives the principle for moral action.

   He insists that in deciding what we ought to do our variable desires are not important -- for an action to be truly moral it has to be done in the belief and because of the belief that it is right, i.e., out of respect for moral law.  For the true moral value of our action it is not sufficient that it arise  from some good inclination, disposition or temperament even according to duty -- it has to arise from the sense of duty, or good will.  Whether the action succeeds in its purpose or not, if it is done with a good will, it is morally acceptable. The consequences which we consider in passing moral judgment are those intended consequences, implicated in the motive of the action.  Many actions, even if they produce good results, that are done in accordance with the law are not moral in this strict sense if they are done with some ulterior motives.  Thus truly morally good action will not only be in accord with the law but also because the law is acknowledged as absolutely and universally binding.  Kant formulated thus  the condition of morality in three propositions (Table 2) : "... the first proposition of morality is that to have moral worth an action must be done from duty.  The second proposition is:  An action performed from duty does not have its moral worth in the purpose which is to be achieved through it but in the maxim by which it is determined.  Its moral value, ... depends on the principle of volition by which the action is done ... The third principle:  ... Duty is the necessity of an action executed from the respect for law."  Respect is understood to be the consciousness of the submission of the will to a law.  Maxim means the subjective principle of volition whereas the practical law is the objective principle that would serve all rational beings also subjectively if reason had full power over the faculty of desire.

Table 1
CLASSIFICATION OF RATIONAL
KNOWLEDGE

 
Material                                                       Formal 

Logic (no empirical part)                           With definite object

Deals with laws of nature                                   Deals with laws of freedom

Physics (theory of nature)                       Ethics (theory of morals)

 Empirical part

Deals with laws of nature                                       Deals with laws of morals concerning
concerning objects.                                              human will. Practical anthropology                                                                           

  “Pure” part
(on a priori principles)
metaphysics

Laws of how everything happen.                        Laws of how everything should happen                                                      
Metaphysics of Nature                                     Metaphysics of Morals  (Theory of  Morals)

Table 2
THREE PROPOSITIONS OF MORALITY
(Condition of Morality)

 

 
1.        Done from duty.

2.         Moral value in the maxim by which action
            is determined and not in the purpose;
            Depends on the principle of volition.

3.         Duty is a necessity of an action from the respect
            of law  i.e. consciousness of the submission
            of the will to a law.

MAXIM:

Subjective principle of volition.
Subjective principle of acting, must be
distinguished from the objective principle, i.e., the practical law.

PRACTICAL LAW:

Objective principle of volition serving all rational beings also subjectively if they were governed by reason.

 

 

PART  II

B. Moral Law or Categorical Imperative    

    Kant next derives the concept of moral law from consideration of pure reason and will.  Everything in nature works according to laws.  But only a rational being has the capacity of acting according to the conception of laws, i.e., according to principles.  Kant equates this capacity with will.  But since reason is required for derivation of actions from laws, will is nothing else but the practical reason that governs human behavior through a conception of law.  In human beings, however, reason of itself does not sufficiently determine the will which is also subjugated to subjective conditions which do not always agree with objective ones.  But the pure conception of duty and of moral law has the highest influence.  Kant emphasizes that moral theory that is put together from a mixture of incentives, feelings, inclinations and partially from rational concepts makes the mind vacillate between motives and leads only accidentally to good and often to bad. The conception of an objective principle to which we refer in governing our actions is a command of reason and the formulation of it is an imperative, an expression containing an "ought" (Table 3).      

    If the action is good as a means to something else, the imperative is hypothetical, thus it is conditional upon circumstances and advisable only.  Such a goal cannot be universally held by all men at all times.   Further the hypothetical imperatives can be divided into technical (imperative of skill) belonging to art and into pragmatic (imperative of prudence), belonging to welfare of the being.

   The moral imperative is unconditional, i.e., it is categorical.  It is our moral consciousness that we ought to do our duty regardless of our inclinations and cannot be derived from psychological study. Now the question arises: How is it possible, i.e., how the constraint of will is possible? This principle is formulated by pure reason from the concept of "ought."  Thus  the idea of obligation itself must dictate a criterion for deciding what our obligations are. A moral imperative commands unconditional conformity of our subjective maxim to a law, while the law contains no reference to specific ends on which it depends.  With this are associated three principles of the will .

 
C.  Three principles of the will

1. The principle of universality

The maxim should contain no condition which would prevent it from being itself a law and universally imperative, i.e., valid for all men as rational beings regardless of their specific desires.  Thus Kant postulates the principle of universality; the principle of the will that determines its conformity to the law is that one should never act in a way that one could not also will that this maxim should be a universal law.  This principle of universality in the imperative form is the categorical imperative:  "Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."  In terms of law of nature the same principle is formulated: “Act as though maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature."

2. The principle of humanity.

Since every rational being exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, a supreme practical principle can be derived that the moral agent should act as if he were a lawgiving member of a realm of ends, i.e., of persons each of whom is an end in himself and an

 

Table 3
PRINCIPLES OF VOLITION (ACTION)
(IMPERATIVES)

 

 
A.         HYPOTHETICAL  (Conditional)
                        Principles of volition
                                Rules of skill (as in science)
                                       Technical
                                       Counsels of prudence

Pragmatic (for happiness as an end)

B.         CATEGORICAL (Unconditional)
                     Laws
                        Commands of morality
                                    Unconditional
                                    Objective
                                    Universally valid
                                    Binding even against inclinations
                                    Belonging to free conduct
                                    Absolutely necessary

 

 

3. The principle of harmony with universal practical reason.

   Moreover, we should act in harmony with the idea of the will of every rational being as making universal laws, therefore should endeavor to further the ends of others: "For the ends of any person, who is an end in himself, must as far as possible also be my end, if that conception for an end in itself is to have its full effect on me” and hence the third principle of the will as the supreme condition of  its harmony with universal practical reason can be formulated as: the idea of the will of every rational being as making universal law. Thus the principles of universality and of humanity constitute the grounds for all practical judgment.

D. Autonomy of the will, the dignity of man and harmony.

From the moral law Kant derives a conception of the autonomy of the will, the dignity of man and harmony.  The will is not only subject to the law but also the lawgiver.  The moral law can obligate unconditionally only if it is a law given by man as sovereign in the realm of ends to himself as a subject in this realm. Man thus has a dignity of a lawgiver -- the laws he obeys are the laws he gives himself.  The being that gives the laws to himself is not merely bound to the law but is freely bound by his own lawgiving activity.  This is why Kant calls moral law autonomous (from the  Greek word for law nomos).  The necessity of acting according to that principle is a duty which pertains to each member in the realm of ends (a systematic union of different rational beings through common laws).  This duty rests on the relation of rational beings to one another and reason therefore relates every maxim of the will as giving laws to every other will and also to every action toward itself.   The imperative form of this principle of autonomy is:  "Act by a maxim which involves its own universal validity for every rational being."   A being that takes the law from another lawgiver -- God, a tyrant, his own cupidity -- must be led to obedience by fear or hope.   He is not then free but heteronomous.  He is not truly moral because all his maxims are hypothetical and he cannot act out of respect for a universal law which takes no account of the contingent and divisive interests of individuals.

   The three formulations of the imperative represent three aspects of one moral law that brings the action to intuition as much as possible.  The will is unconditionally good which follows this maxim of the moral law.  But a rational being cannot expect that every rational being be true to it; so Kant reformulates the law into still another, practical version:  "Act according to the maxim of a universally legislative member of an only potential realm of ends."  But still it commands categorically and Kant emphasizes that it suffices that the dignity of humanity as rational nature and respect for the  idea should serve as the inflexible precept of the will.  Moreover, the worthiness of every rational subject to be a legislative member consists in independence of the maxims from such incentives.  Hence morality is the relation of actions of possible universal lawgiving by maxims of the will. Action compatible with the authority of the will is permitted.   The will whose maxims necessarily are in harmony with the laws of autonomy is an absolutely good will.  The dependence of a will not absolutely good on the principle of autonomy is obligation.  And the objective necessity of an action from obligation Kant calls duty.

   In the concept of duty we usually think of subjection, yet there is dignity in it so far as the person who fulfills his/her duties is a legislator of the law and subject to it for that reason.  Also no fear or inclination to the law may give a moral sanction in the strict sense of the word to action.  Thus autonomy of the will is the supreme condition of morality:  "Never choose except in such a way that the maxims of the choice are comprehended in the same volition as a universal law."  If the will seeks the determination of the law outside itself in the property of any of its objects, heteronomy results and becomes the source of the spurious principles of morality based on hypothetical imperatives in the terminology of Kant (see the list below).  An example will illustrate this.  According to the rule of heteronomy and hypothetical imperative -- "I should not lie if I wish to keep my reputation.  According to the rule of autonomy and categorical imperative -- "I should not lie even though it would not cause me the least injury."

But Kant, being a realistic man, admits that among all spurious principles he would admit as most tolerable the principle derived from the concept of moral sense because it preserves the idea of a will good in itself. He defines this moral sense as  "The subjective effect which the law [his moral law of categorical imperative] has upon the will to which reason alone gives objective grounds."

Table 4
Kant's List of Conditional (or Spurious)
Principles of Morality from the Principle of Heteronomy

 

PART III

F. Possibility of the Categorical Imperative

   So far Kant dealt with the question: "What is morality, such that we could say that an action with such and such characteristics would be moral?" Now Kant has to deal with another question:  "Can such an action actually take place?"  Answers to both questions cannot be given by citing examples, they have to be answered by reason.  The key to the answer to the second question lies in the freedom of the will -- otherwise morality is impossible, because something else would determine it and the categorical imperative would become hypothetical imperative.  Thus freedom cannot be a law of nature, rather an autonomy of the will that is the property of the will to be law to itself.  For reason must regard itself as the author of its principles and thus practical reason or the will of a rational being must regard itself free, independent of foreign influences.  Kant, following in principle Aristotle's reasoning, explains this freedom through his theory of knowledge that there is something else in man behind the appearance of man, namely the ego or consciousness in itself or the pure activity of reason which is free from causal determination in the world of appearance i.e., things which we perceive.  Thus man can be apart from nature and free from its laws, when reason exclusively determines his action, but also is a part of the world of sense under the laws of nature and as such not free.   Freedom is expressed by the categorical imperative and the hypothetical imperative expresses inclinations in the world of sense.   Kant summarizes this by saying:  "As a rational being and thus as belonging to the intelligible world, man cannot think of the causality of his own will except under the idea of freedom, for independence from the determining causes of the world of sense (an independence which reason must always ascribe to itself) is freedom.  The concept of autonomy is inseparably connected with the idea of freedom, and with the former there is inseparably bound the universal principle of morality, which ideally is the  ground of all actions of rational beings, just as natural law is the ground of all appearances."

   Categorical imperatives are possible because the idea of freedom makes man a member of the intelligible world. If one were a member only of this intelligible world, all actions would be always in accordance with the autonomy of the will. But since man is at the same time a member of the world of sense, his actions ought to conform to the autonomy of the will as belonging to the intelligible world, which according to reason should dominate the sensuously affected will.  Anyone who is accustomed to using his reason is conscious of the good will which constitutes the law for his bad will as a member of the world of sense and acknowledges the authority of this law even while transgressing it.  The moral "ought" is one's own volition as a member of the intelligible world.  It is conceived as an "ought" only in so far as one regards himself at the same time as a member of the world of sense.

   Kant next asserts, however, that philosophy has no knowledge of this supersensible world, it only can indicate its possibility and thus defends foundations of morality.

To summarize briefly Kant's foundations of morals:

   Kant believed that ethics not only can but has to be validated without appeal to God's will or God's orders.  Otherwise it would not be moral law in the proper sense, that is, ethics would not be autonomous and thus would not be ethics properly so called.  He believed that moral law was to be validated not only independently of utility, pleasure, happiness, natural desires, or positive law, but independently of God's will as well.  This is a specification of Kant's general concept of moral actions:  if we were acting in conformity with moral law not because it is moral law but because God wants us to do so, or because we risk divine retribution in the afterlife, we would not act morally in the strict sense.  This principle of autonomy is so conceived that it excludes from moral motivations in the strict sense not only the fear of hell and purgatory, but even the pure readiness  to subordinate one's will to God's orders; the motive for doing God's will is not a moral motive.  Kant states that only the good will is good in a moral sense of the word, the strict sense.   More, he says, there is only one motive which is morally good and this is the will to act according to duty as expressed in a general principle.  Thus an act is morally praiseworthy if it is done out of a sense of duty as such, and not, for instance, from mere inclination or compassion.  If what is my duty happens to coincide with what I will spontaneously, my act is morally empty (in the strict sense); a duty should be performed merely because it is duty and not for any other reason. Kant also realized that people being what they are may act from various motives.  Thus the rational act performed out of a sense of moral duty is the supreme ideal of moral acts.

   It is the task of modern investigation into the evolution of human psyche to illuminate ultimately he co-ordination between the nature and freedom, between human being as part of natural world and a free agent, between the moral and natural ends of mankind.[iii]

   Kantian morality has a supreme normative principle, the Categorical Imperative, recommending us to act in such a way that we would wish the particular rule governing a given action to become a universal law.  This principle has a formal character and it states the condition on which any particular moral rule may claim to be valid.

 

Table 5
FORMULATIONS
OF THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

From the principle of universality:

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

From concept of nature:

Act as though maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature

From the principle of humanity (human a rational being as an end in itself):

Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only

From the principle of autonomy of the will:

Act by a maxim which involves its own universal validity for every rational being

 

 

Table 6
LEVELS OF BEHAVIORAL RULES

 

I.         INSTINCTIVE

                e.g. food, procreation, fear of the unknown

                               social life in social animals

                              (governed by genes and epigenetic rules only)

II.       HETERONOMOUS

A.    Empirical: From principle of happiness                                                                

                                                 From concept of moral sense

            (based on inclinations; all inclinations summed up in the idea                            

            of “happiness”)

               B. Rational: From concept of perfection

                                              Transcendental, theological

III.     AUTONOMOUS

               Categorical Imperative (Autonomous moral law)

                        A law for the will of every rational being

            It only can have as its subject itself considered

giving universal law.

 

 

 

---

[i]    Author previously discussed Kant’s ethics in the context of the possibility of developing a universal moral code: Marian Hillar, “Is a Universal ethics Possible? A Humanist Proposition.” In The Philosophy of Humanism and the Issues of Today. American Humanist Association, Houston, 1995, pp. 127-148.

[ii]   Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Mataphysics of  Morals and What is Enlightenment? Translated, with Introduction, by Lewis White beck. (New York: London: Macmillan Publishing Company, Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1988).

        Onora O’Neill, “Kantian Ethics.” In  A Companion to Ethics. Peter Singer, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 175-185.

[iii]   Robert Wright, The Moral Animal. Evolutionary Psychology of Everyday Life. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). 

        Mary Midgley, “The Evolution of Ethics.”  In P. Singer, op. cit., pp. 3-13.

        Michael Ruse,  “The Significance pof Evolution.” In P. Singer, op. cit., pp. 500-510.