The Puzzle of Ethics. Peter Vardy

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ are necessarily wrong – simpy that they are not a reliable guide to the rightness of moral conduct.

      If the development of a ‘good will’ is the highest task for any human being, there is one essential precondition which Kant does not argue for but considers must be assumed even though it cannot be proved – that is that human beings are free. Without freedom, there can be no discussion of morality as morality necessarily presupposes the ability to choose right or wrong. If human choices are wholly determined – if we are not free – then we are not moral agents.

      Kant’s method is to start by assuming that moral judgements are true. He then sets out to analyse the conditions which must be in force if these are to be true.

      Kant distinguishes between two types of imperatives or commands under which human beings act:

       Hypothetical imperatives are imperatives that are based on an ‘if’, for instance: ‘If you want to stay healthy, take exercise’ or ‘If you want your wife to love you, remember her birthday’. We can reject the command (to take exercise or to remember birthdays) if we are willing to reject the ‘if’ on which the command rests. These imperatives bid us do things which are a means to some end. They are arrived at by the exercise of pure reason.

       Categorical imperatives, by contrast, are not based on any ‘if’, they do not depend on a particular end and, Kant considers, they would be followed by any fully rational agent. They are ends in themselves and not means to some other end. Moral duties are categorical because they should be followed for the sake of duty only, simply because they are duties and not for any other reason. Categorical imperatives are arrived at through practical reason and they are understood as a basis for action.

      There is no answer to the question, ‘Why should I do my duty?’ except ‘Because it is your duty.’ If there was any answer it would represent a reason and would make the imperative hypothetical and not categorical.

      Human beings, in Kant’s view, are not wholly rational – but they can strive to become so. Animals are dominated by desires and instincts and these are present in human beings as well. However Kant considers that humans also have the ability to reason and, through the exercise of reason, to act not in accordance with our inclinations but according to the demands that reason makes on us – in other words from a sense of duty. A categorical imperative is one that excludes self-interest and would be one that any fully rational agent (human or otherwise) would follow and if any command is held to be categorical, it is necessary to show that it fits under this heading.

      It is not easy to separate actions done from an inclination and those done from a sense of duty – it is important to recognise that it is not the action which determines goodness but the intention, motive and reason lying behind the action. The businessman who is honest because it suits him or because he feels like being honest is not, according to Kant, acting morally because he is not acting rationally. The good person must act correctly, according to reason, no matter what the consequences and independent of his or her own feelings or inclinations. If a person wills to perform an act, and if this willing does not rest on a sense of duty, then it will not be a morally good action. An action which is not done from inclination at all but purely rationally, from a sense of duty, will be a morally good action. This does not mean that one has to act against one’s inclinations, but it does mean that one’s inclinations cannot determine one’s moral duty.

      There are, of course, particular moral rules which are categorical and which everyone would agree to such as ‘Thou shalt not kill’, but Kant considers these to be derived from a more general principle and he seeks to determine what this is. He arrives at a number of different formulations of what he terms ‘The Categorical Imperative’ on which all moral commands are based. The best known are the three that Kant includes in his summary of the Groundwork (79–81) and which H. J. Paton (in The Moral Law, Hutchinson) translates as follows:

      1 Act as if the maxim of your action was to become through your will a universal law of nature.

      This is the Formula of the Law of Nature and is saying that we should act in such a way that we can will that the maxim (or general principle) under which we act should be a general law for everyone. Kant therefore aims to ensure that we eliminate self-interest in the particular situation in which we find ourselves. Kant considers that if we will to act wholly rationally according to such a principle, then we shall develop a good will. There are, however, other formulations, including what Kant terms the Practical Imperative –

       2. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

      This is the Formula of the End in Itself. Kant says that it can never be right to treat people just as a means to some end – human beings are always ‘ends in themselves’ and Kant describes human beings as ‘holy’ because of this. It can never be right, therefore, to use human beings as a means to the end of our own happiness or to treat any group of people as a minority that does not matter. This principle enshrines the idea of the equality of each and every human being irrespective of class, colour, race, sex, age or circumstance.

       3. So act as if you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.

      This is the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends. Kant envisaged rational agents acting as if they were making laws for themselves based on the use of reason and, in so far as they do this, they will become ‘lawmaking members of a kingdom of ends’. The laws adopted by all members will coincide because they are all rational and if there are disagreements then rational arguments should be able to resolve these.

      It is, perhaps, significant to note the similarities between Kant’s call to disinterested duty and Jesus’ call to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:39). The love that Jesus had in mind was not based on emotion but on a call to right action towards every other human being (Kierkegaard, in Works of Love, describes this as non-preferential love) and this could be seen as very similar to Kant’s basic position – although it should be added that Jesus’s first commandment was the call to love God before anything else and this Kant rejected. For Kant, the only service to God comes in acting morally to other human beings according to the dictates of reason.

      Kant considers that the highest aspiration of a human being is the development of a good will and such a good will is developed by acting rationally according to the principles laid down by the Categorical Imperative. Humans can, if they wish, think of their moral duties as if they were Divine Commands, but morality is specifically not based on such commands. If it was, it would then be arbitrary (cf. the Euthyphro dilemma p. 7).

      God is largely peripheral for Kant although God is needed to underwrite Kant’s trust in the fairness of the Universe – particularly the idea that, after death, the virtuous and vice-ridden will be treated appropriately. Kant has a tremendous faith in the metaphysical fairness of the Universe – which is strange as he wished to bar the door to metaphysics because he did not think it was possible to argue from the world of experience (phenomena) to anything beyond this. However, he had faith in the justice of the Universe and he considered that mortality was a postulate of practical reason. Kant’s view can be taken as implying that if the Universe is fair, it follows that human beings must survive death as clearly in this life the virtuous are often treated very badly and those who pursue the path of vice all too often have an apparently happy and contented life.

      Kant largely reduces religion to ethics – to be holy is to be moral. Religion is only valuable as a way of helping people to lead a moral life. He considered that philosophy had supremacy over theology as philosophy was based on reason without unsupported faith claims. Kant considered that religion had to operate within the bounds of reason СКАЧАТЬ