Immanuel Kant 2

Part 1 - Mind your Motive

What gives an act its moral worth?

If it can’t be directed at utility or satisfying wants or desires?

Kant:

What makes an action morally worthy consists not in the consequences or in the results that flow from it. What makes an action morally worthy has to do with the motive, with the quality of the will, with the intention for which the act is done.

KANT’S CONCEPTION OF MORALITY

Moral worth of an action depends on motive (do the right thing for the right reason)

“A good will isn’t good because of what it affects or accomplished, it’s good in itself. Even if by utmost effort the good will accomplishes nothing it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself.” — Immanuel Kant

Q: What stops morality from completely subjective ?

What’s to guarantee that the law I gave myself when I’m acting out of duty is the same as the laws that others are giving themselves? It sounds like to act autonomously is to act according to a law one gives to oneself, but what guarantees that if we all exercise our reason we will come up with one and the same moral law?

Kant’s answer: The capacity for reason exists undifferentiated in all of us, thus the reason we give ourselves as autonomous beings is a kind of practical reason that we share as human beings, it’s not idiosyncratic[异质的].

Part 2 - The Supreme Principle of Morality

Kant’s ground work is about two big questions:

1. What is the supreme principle of morality?

2. How is freedom possible?

Kant’s Three Contrasts

Morality

Motives: duty vs. inclination

Freedom:

Determination of Will:

(two different ways that my will can be determined) autonomous vs. heteronomous

Reason:

Imperatives:(two different commands of reason) categorical vs. hypothetical

Hypothetical imperatives use instrumental reason - if you want X then do Y - it’s “means ends” reason.

A categorical imperative means without reference or dependents on any further purpose.

“If the action would be good solely as a means to something else, the imperative is hypothetical; if the action is represented as good in itself and therefore as necessary… for a will which of itself accords with reason, then the imperative is categorical.”— Immanuel Kant

Kant gives three formulations of the categorical imperative.

THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

The Formula of Universal Law

The Formula of Humanity as End

Kant’s test for determining whether an action is morally right: to identify the principle expressed in our action and then ask whether that principle could ever become a universal law that every other human being could act on.The moral intuition lying behind the universalization test is: The reasons for your action shouldn't depend (or their justification) on your own interests, your needs, your special circumstances being more important than anybody’s else’s.

“I say that man, and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will. “— Immanuel Kant

Kant distinguished persons on the one hand and things on the other. Rational beings are persons, they don’t just have relative value for us, but they have an absolute value, an intrinsic value, that is, rational beings have dignity, they’re worthy of reverence and respect.