PHIL- Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

• offers justification for why we have a categorical duty towards others than one that is founded on consequences

• what solution does he bring for trolley cart problem

• attended University of Konigsberg, 6 years tutor, then began teaching at the university. retired at 72

• First Major work, The Critique of Pure Reason

• Wrote The Groundworks of the Metaphysics of Morals

Kant rejects utilitarianism

What is the supreme principle of morality?

how is freedom possible?

• all human beings have a dignity that commands respect

• basis for moral respect flows not from self-ownership but from the fact that we are all beings capable of reason

• we are autonomous beings: being capable of acting and choosing freely

• held that pain and pleasure are not our sovereign masters

• we have reason. it is because we have reason that we are not simply at the mercy of our appetites

What is Freedom for Kant

• does not consist in our ability to do whatever we want

• Freedom in not the absence of obstacles

Why?

• we are not acting freely when we seek pleasure

  • acting to satisfy appetites

  • not freedom; being a slave to our passions

  • acting according to natural necessity

Freedom is the opposite of necessity

• act autonomously; act according to a law that i give myself

  • not to act according to the laws of nature

• heteronomy: act according to inclinations that I have not chosen for myself

If reason determines my dictates, I overcome the laws of nature, the inclinations that I did not and could not choose for myself

Note: with Utilitarianism, we give into pains

• this distinguishing characteristic of human beings is their rationality- ability to think and reason-and the moral status of an act is determined solely by the dictates of reason

is acting freely choosing an end?

• to act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end

• it is to choose the end itself for its own sake

• human being can do this. natural substance cannot do this.

  • An acorn cannot choose to be an apple seed. The end is an oak tree.

• When we act autonomously, we cease to act as instruments to ends given outside of ourselves and we seek to act in accordance with a law that we give ourselves.

• in this way we become ends in ourselves

• This is what gives us our moral dignity

• this is why it is wrong to use others as merely (solely) means to a further end

Morality must be based not on contingent reasons nor instrumental reasons, but on our treatment of people as ends in themselves

Kants Conception of morality

• moral worth of an action depends on motive (do the right thing for the right reason) (164-165)

• “good will not good bc of effect or accomplishments, and not cuz adequacy to achieve any proposed end

• only kind of thing that can confer a proper motive is duty

Think of opposites

Motives: Duty (obligation) vs. Inclination (suggestion)

Determinations of will: Autonomy (choice) vs. Heteronomy (didn’t choose

Reason imperatives: Categorical vs. Hypothetical

Standpoints: Intelligible vs. Sensible Realms

Duty vs. Inclination

Inclination- impulses, desires, wishes sympathy, altruism, and so forth

Duty- necessity of an act done out of respect for the law

Kants concept of Freedom

Autonomy- act freely “law I give myself”

Ex. Humans can choose what to become

Heteronomy- “law I don’t give myself”

Ex. Acorn HAS to become acorn tree

• to act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end

• to choose the end itself for its own sake

• human being can do this

• natural substance cannot do this

Trolley cart:

Autonomy cont.

Autonomy of the will- property the will has of being a law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition)

• when we act, we cease to act as instruments to ends given outside of ourselves and we seek to act in accordance with a law that we give ourselves

• in this way, we become ends in ourselves

• this is what gives us our moral dignity

Whereas Utilitarian means to end, goal is to have dignity

“Hence principle of autonomy is ‘never choose except in such a way that maxims of your choice are also comprehended as universal law in the same act of will’”

• people shouldn’t lie

Reason

• basis for law that i give myself

• reason determines my dictates, i overcome laws of nature, the inclinations that i did not and could not choose for myself

• distinguishing characteristic of human beings is their rationality, and the moral status of an act is determined solely by the dictates of reason

• to think rationally one must follow the rules of logic which are universally valid (same rules for everyone)

Pure reason is used to arrive at the law

Imperative

statement about what you ought to do

Hypothetical vs. Categorical Imperatives

• distinction arises from the moral and nonmoral senses of the word ought

• Ex. you OUGHT to take guitar lessons (hypothetical), you OUGHT not to kill (categorical)

Hypothetical- obligation holds only because we have a given desire. Change desire, obligation changes. If desire x, then do y

Categorical- holds independently. DO Y!

“if action would be good solely as means to something else, hypothetical; action represented as good in itself and therefore as necessary… for will accords with reason, categorical.”

• command categorically, commands without reference to or dependence on any further purpose

Supreme principle of morality

categorical imperative: universal law

• maxim principle or rule on which a specific action is based

• Ex. man obtains a loan under false pretenses. Rule acting “loan, make promise to repay money even if you know that you cannot do so”

• Trolley:

is formulation persuasive and universalized?

is Kant here appealing to an end?

• appeals to an end to assess the rule

• moral worth of action lies not in value of its consequence, but in the fact that i follow a rule that i gave myself

Second formulation: Humanity as end

“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”

“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”

• FALSE PROMISE, using you as a means to my end

• failing to respect your dignity as a person

Murder and Suicide

• treating yourself as a means to an end

• suicide and murder same bc universal character of categorical principle

Intelligible vs. sensible realms

• all natural being belong to the sensible realm.

  • In this realm, all actions are determined by the laws of nature

• rational beings also inhabit an intelligible realm.

  • This realm is independent of natural laws.

  • in this realm i am capable of autonomy.

“when think of ourselves as free, transfer…”

since we are in both realms, actions guided by both reason and forces outside ourselves

Free will and will under moral law are one in the same

Kants case against lying

• is kant’s right to maintain that it is always wrong to lie?

  • treating someone as a means to an end

misleading truth. Monica Lewinsky example

• answer IDK.