Thought Itself

For this lecture, please read Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Kant & Categorical Morality

Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804 CE) was born in Koenigsberg, capital of Prussia, the largest state of the German empire from 1525 to 1932 that in Kant’s day included much of Northern Germany and Poland.  Kant grew up in a devotedly Pietist family, a branch of Lutheranism that placed a great emphasis on individual morality and purity, but Kant found himself drawn to the purity of rationalism, mathematics and science rather than religious tradition and ceremony.  He became a professor at the University of Koenigsberg, and never traveled more than fifty kilometers from his hometown in his entire life.  He was known for being obsessively punctual, and legend has it that he would take his daily walks after lunch so routinely that housewives would set their grandfather clocks by Kant as he passed by their houses, such that Kant acquired the nickname, “The Clock of Koenigsberg”.  Kant would always walk alone, as he believed it proper and healthy to breathe through one’s nose in the open air and kept his mouth closed outside.  He was also deeply disturbed by perspiration.  It is said that the only morning Kant broke from his usual strict routine was to purchase a newspaper announcing the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Kant was primarily concerned with metaphysics, the laws of being.  In ancient Athens, Plato’s idealism and Aristotle’s metaphysics were concerned with the shape and laws of the cosmos, but in early modern Europe, Kant’s idealism and metaphysics are concerned with the shape and laws of the human mind, the ways that understanding and reason work psychologically.  Kant believed in strict, rule abiding morality, which he considered the true means of Christian salvation, not religious ritual.  Using our universal faculty of reason, Kant argued that we can come to understand absolute principles, moral laws which we should always obey no matter the situation or consequences.

In his early work, Kant wrote about philosophy and the natural sciences, reconciling the work of Newton with philosophy and theology.  Like Descartes, Kant argued that the regularity of the cosmos shows that it is intelligently designed and operates in a rational manner. Kant says that reason is above and beyond everything human, constraining all rational beings, and that any other rational being, which for Kant would be God and angels but for American philosophy teachers today is often extraterrestrial aliens, would have to admit that universal laws are valid and necessary.  This is much like the Mutazilites, rationalists of the earlier Islamic golden age who argued that God was identical with the rationality of the cosmos and was therefore incapable of contradicting himself.  Strangely, in his old age Kant hypothesized that the use of domestic electricity caused strange cloud formations and epidemics of disease in cats, a theory which might have survived if Kant had lived in the days of the internet.

As Europe rose to new heights in the 1600s and 1700s, passing the Islamic world in wealth and power, the sciences were discovering many new truths about the world, aided much by mechanical innovations and algebraic math.  These new discoveries created an opposition between rationalists, who argued that the world has laws that we can deduce with reason, and empiricists, who argued that we use reason to form assumptions based on experience.  One of the most famous empiricists was David Hume, who argued that all human truth is habit, prejudice and assumption, such that we assume one billiard ball causes another to move, a subjective expectation that may not follow.  Upon reading the work of Hume, Kant  wrote that he had awoken from his “dogmatic slumbers,” now tasked to prove that there is objective truth beyond mere subjective assumptions given that all beliefs are acquired through experience.

Hume’s radically skeptical position, the one that awoke Kant from his “dogmatic slumbers”, is that all of our thinking, our identity and beliefs are assumptions, habits, and prejudices, acquired through experience and induction.  This is similar to the Buddhist theory that the mind and all of its concepts, including identity and memories, are skandas, ‘piles’ that accumulate over time.  Buddhists often use this to illustrate the doctrine of impermanence, that all things are mortal and temporary.  Also like Buddhism, Hume argued that reason is ruled by the passions, not independent of them.  Hume had access to Buddhist views through Jesuit scholars and missionaries who had traveled to Thailand and Tibet. Hume argues that all truth is assumption and habit, which means that any accepted truth must be continuously justified and checking against new experience rather than simply proved once with reason, a position Foucault argued about power.  This opens up the potential for continuous questioning of all established and institutionalized forms of knowledge.

Hume presents us with his famous and central billiard ball analogy.  Imagine two billiard balls, one white and one red, and that the white ball rolls down the table, strikes the red ball, and causes it to move.  There are three events here.  First, the white ball moves up to the blue ball.  Second, there is the sound of a ‘clack’ as the two presumably collide.  Third, the red ball moves away from the white ball.  Naturally, we acquire a habit of perception involving both impressions of our senses and ideas of our minds, and arrive at the understanding of causation, that the red ball struck the blue ball causing it to move.  We naturally assume that the motion of the red ball caused the motion of the blue ball. Since we were babies, we have all seen solid things move into other solid things, followed by sounds and further movements.  While various sensations such as sights and sounds were involved, we each developed a similar idea of causation that we derived not from abstract reason but from direct experiences.  We developed a habit and prejudice such that when we watched the first ball moving toward the second, we assumed that the second ball would move, and then when our impression of the second ball moving fit with our prejudicial idea, we assumed that our prediction was accurate and allowed it to further reinforce our idea.

Consider that we could make a movie of the two billiard balls, filming ball A striking ball B, and then display the film to an audience.  While every member of the audience would assume that ball A caused ball B to move, they are all watching an image, not the physical act, and so the image of ball A is not causing the image of ball B to move.  It is the media of the film, today digital data, that causes the image of ball B to appear and move.  It is an illusion that one image is striking the other.  Obviously, we want the audience of the film to have this idea, but this does not make it any less of an illusion, whether the billiard balls are filmed or animated.  In a sense, when we watch animation we know and don’t know that what is going on is ‘real’.  We can ‘suspend’ our disbelief, and allow our minds to watch and believe in the animated events, even though any animation must, by its nature, be false caricatures of events.

Likewise, we can construct an animatronic billiard table, like at a ride in Disneyland, that looks like objects are hitting each other over and over again even if the sound is artificial and the objects never touch.  Barthes, the French philosopher and literary critic, said that now that we have built Disneyland, maybe we will be more critical of ideology. While nothing can be known for certain, our impressions do accumulate and build up in our ideas, and thus they are real and useful to us.  They are not so real that they ensure that nothing could ever contradict them, but they are real to us and we often use them successfully in the world.  Hume uses the example of Adam in the garden of Eden as a human who learns by experience, starting with a blank slate, writing: “Even Adam, with all his science, would never have been able to demonstrate that the course of nature must continue uniformly the same, and that the future must be conformable to the past.”

“We are determined by custom alone to suppose the future conformable to the past.  When I see a billiard ball moving towards another, my mind is immediately carried by habit to the usual effect, and anticipates my sight by conceiving the second ball in motion… It is not, therefore, reason which is the guide of life, but custom.  That alone determines the mind, in all instances, to suppose the future conformable to the past.  However easy this step may seem, reason would never, to all eternity, be able to make it... With regard to any matter of fact, however strong the proof may be from experience, I can always conceive the contrary, though I cannot always believe it… Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian (relativistic) were not nature too strong for it.”

Mathematical and geometric proofs look nice, but Hume says that sometimes geometry seems like it is proving something that is later disproved, as Descartes himself notes as he imagines a demon that could deceive him even about the most basic forms of mathematics.  While Hume and other Empiricists would freely admit that it is very useful to follow one’s assumption that two and three always equal five, this is based on our experience of the durability of this truth in the world, not based on purely abstract reasoning.  There are even cases, such as the infamous proof that one equals two, which play on our regular use of mathematics that show its mechanics are not flawless.  If you figure out the trick to the proof, you will understand why additional rules are added to mathematics to correct the practice in cases that it breaks down.

Awoken by the skepticism of Hume, Kant spent a ten year “decade of silence”, from 1770 to 1780, working on the first of his three Critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason.  Originally, Kant thought the work would take three months.  This first Critique focused on what Kant claimed is objective reason exclusively separate from the influence of all experience as well as emotion, things Hume would have flatly denied as impossible.  Is there such a thing as pure logic or reason, without influence by motive or by experience? Kant’s conception of understanding is often illustrated with the metaphor of eyeglasses.  While we may not be able to know what the world looks like without our glasses, we can examine the glasses to see the frame through which we view the world.  Kant’s second two critiques, the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Pure Judgement, focused on the use of reason in practical matters, as Practical Reason deals with freedom and morality and Pure Judgement with beauty and art.

As the self experiences the world through its understanding, it finds itself with fundamental categories, which Kant calls foundations.  This is why the text we examine today is sometimes translated as the Groundwork of and other times as the Foundations of or Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals.  One of these foundations is the category of causation, which Hume considered to be an assumption learned through experience, illustrated by billiards.  Kant, targeting Hume, argued that causation is a foundational category that is present in the mind before and apart from all experience, and that we find ourselves categorizing the world in terms of causation in a way that cannot be derived from experience.  Another foundational category of Kant’s is substance.  For Kant, the mind begins as an empty cabinet rather than a blank slate, with categorical compartments of causation and substance ready to be filled by experiences.  Thus, no matter what our individual experiences are, we will all categorize them in terms of causation and substance.

Kant’s Königsberg was a traditional stronghold of Aristotelianism.  When Aristotle’s work and the work of his ancient Greek commentators was rediscovered in Greek, they made a major resurgence, particularly in Protestant Germany, where Aristotle’s work was disentangled from Catholic and Scholastic issues, leading to a rereading of Aristotle’s work in the original Greek and apart from its use in Latin Roman Catholic Christian theology.  Protestant universities founded in the 1500s and 1600s placed Aristotle’s philosophy at the core of their curriculum. Königsberg University, founded in 1544, established itself as one of the most important Aristotelian universities by the end of the 1600s, publishing many guides and companions to Aristotle’s ideas to explain and establish them as superior, particularly to the thinking of Descartes.  Königsberg was also one of the most prominent centers of Locke’s thought in Germany, whose thought, along with Hume’s, was a major British influence on Kant’s own.  Kant’s reawakening from his dogmatic slumber, via Hume, is connected with his rediscovery of Aristotle’s logical categories as a method of overcoming Hume’s skepticism.

Kant engaged closely with Aristotelian works and logic in the 1770s, as he formulated his ideas and wrote the Critique of Pure Reason, and realized that Aristotle’s doctrine of categories could serve as a better basis for pure laws of understanding and thought. Kant, like Aristotle, argues that the imagination plays a mediary role, extending the particulars we understand through sensation into universals of understanding, which we confirm as knowledge via the process of reason. The crucial difference between Kant and Aristotle, which we will revisit once we have discussed Kant’s ethical ideas, is that Aristotle argued that the world does come in separate categories and species of things, which we can understand in terms of their differences, but in ethics Aristotle argued that we gain the habit to be virtuous and judge each situation as an individual situation, using balance between extremes, while Kant argued that we must come up with categorical rules and laws that we should always follow in every situation, no matter the consequences. Thus, in ethics, Kant follows Aristotle’s ideas about categories in logic, and oddly not Aristotle’s ideas about virtues in ethics.

Kant used the metaphor of an island in a stormy sea to illustrate the rational mind amidst the flux of the sensual world, objective and rational in the sea of the uncertain.  Hume famously argued that one cannot derive an ought from an is, that we cannot know what should happen merely based on what is happening.  Kant meets Hume halfway.  Is and ought are two separate things, the first fashioned by the understanding and the second speculated with reasoning, but for Kant reason can derive what objectively ought to be from what is, insofar as the ideal, universal and absolute shape of our minds is the model we have in each and every particular situation.  Kant argues that his central example of morality, Never lie, is a necessary conclusion that reason arrives at when it properly surveys itself and understanding.  While reason cannot tell us whether we will lie next Tuesday, Kant would say that it would be objectively wrong to do so given the ideal shape of our minds, much as we cannot say whether we will have four, five or nine muffins next Tuesday, but we can say that if we have four, and then get five more, we will certainly and absolutely have nine given the ideal shape our minds give to mathematics.

Nietzsche said Kant was like a fox who admirably broke out of his cage, only to lose his way and wander back into it.  Nietzsche disregards all claims to objective truth as mere human interpretations, much like Hume, and so he admires Kant for arguing that reason is free to do as it likes but finds him foolish for arguing that reason must conform to the rational, objective understanding or be wrong.  While Kant had hoped to justify and preserve metaphysics, his skepticism towards our knowing the thing-in-itself ultimately lead to the downfall of metaphysics, heralded by Nietzsche.

The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Kant says that ancient Greek philosophers correctly divided philosophy into three sciences, three areas of inquiry where rational reasoning results in coherent understanding: physics, concerned with things and nature, ethics, concerned with people and freedom, and logic, concerned with the form of understanding and reasoning itself.  This is somewhat in line with Aristotle, but more specifically the way Stoics divided philosophy inspired by Aristotle and others. Kant says that just as specialized labor leads to perfection in craft work and being an unspecialized jack-of-all-trades leads to barbarism, we first listen to the philosopher who specializes in the pure forms of understanding and reason before we consider the views of ethicists who specialize in human laws and freedoms.

The overall aim and end of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is, as Kant puts it, “the search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality.”  That principle, or foundational fixture of morality, is the categorical imperative: that we should act in a way that we could always, universally act in any sort of situation.  The categorical imperative is a moral, or rule, which serves as a meta-moral, or meta-rule, a rule of all further rules.  The central example Kant uses as a moral or rule we should always follow is that we should never lie in any sort of situation, no matter the consequences.  Thus, the meta-rule is act as we should always act, and the central rule Kant uses, which follows the meta-rule, is to never lie, which is to act in a particular way which we should always do, universally.  Aristotle states in his Nicomachean Ethics that there is no simple rule we must always follow in every situation, but Kant argues that there is no ethics beyond morality, that rules we follow in every situation are foundational to ethics, and hence the title, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. While other ethical thinkers argue that morality and following rules is an important part of ethics, for Kant morality is ethics entirely.

Kant argues it is impossible to empirically construct from our experience a moral science of universal laws that obliges us to follow them with absolute necessity, such as his first and central example, Thou shalt not lie.  Rather, we can only determine it using pure reason, apart from all experience and examples. Here, Kant is stricter than Moses, and most of the ethical philosophers we cover, in an absolute and universal way.  Just as the fifth of the Ten Commandments says Thou shalt not kill, but technically you can’t murder your fellow people, your neighbors, but can kill enemies in wartime, and the eighth commandment says Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, but technically you can lie to the enemy or your friends about anything other than your neighbors, those of your in-group, it is arguable that the Ten Commandments are situational, what Kant calls hypothetical rather than categorical, depending on this or that condition of this or that situation. When Kant himself says Thou shalt not lie, he means universally, such that you can’t lie to anyone under any circumstances, no matter who they are or what it costs.  I have heard that in one of Kant’s university lectures, he does say that if you are being tortured for information by the enemy, the enemy is not deserving of the truth and you can lie, which if true is quite a contradiction and would undermine Kant’s whole ethical theory.

Kant argues that if we can do the right thing for the right reason, it shows that we have good will, which is the only thing we can conceive of that has unconditional worth in itself, as it is of value to us no matter what the situation is or what conditions are in a particular situation.  Like Aristotle, Kant argues that there are things that we value for other ends beyond themselves, such as Aristotle argued about bridal-making, which is for the further purpose of horse-mastery, which is for the further purpose of war.  Kant agrees with Aristotle that health and happiness are things sought in-themselves, as ends which are not sought for ends beyond themselves, but also agrees with Aristotle that health and happiness are not unconditionally good in every sort of situation.  Aristotle speaks as if reason and contemplation of things is the highest good, but like Kant, Aristotle understands that reason can be misused for terrible purposes with bad motives, and so reason is also not always, categorically good.  Both Kant and Aristotle argue that we should do what is rational, above and beyond what makes us healthy or happy, but all of these things could be situationally misused, and used for the benefit of some at the expense of others.

While Aristotle argues that there are no things which are always good in every situation, and so we must build up a “diet” of varied situations to gain the skill of judging things well, situation by situation, Kant argues that goodwill is unconditionally good, always good no matter the situation.  While it does seem that if reason, health and happiness can be bad or misused in this or that situation, it also seems that goodwill could be similarly misused, such as when someone with goodwill follows a command of a superior who misleads the subordinate and their goodwill into doing something that is only good for the superior and brings disaster to the subordinate and others.  Kant does not consider this possibility, as he believes that goodwill is a special type of motivation that is good regardless of what object it is attached to or what consequences follow.  It is similar to the higher happiness of joy, happiness in-itself independent of what the situation is or what we have or do not have, which we considered in India with the Jains and Buddhists.

We could seek greater happiness or health for ourselves at the cost of happiness or health of others, like a vampire who feeds themselves by draining others, so even the thriving of Aristotle, the end sought beyond all other ends, even beyond the ends-in-themselves of health and happiness, could be conceived as situationally good, as we could thrive at the expense of others.  For Kant, goodwill is aimed not at personal happiness, health or thriving, but at the indiscriminate, impartial good for all, equally, and so it is not an end, but rather a motive and an origin, a source of action which is unquestionably and unconditionally good.  In other words, Kant has found something that is good in-itself which is not sought as an end, and so even if a situation turns out to be bad, good will remains good in-itself, and is impartial, seeking the good of all equally.  For Kant, good will is a singularly special kind of motivation, different from all others, as all other types of motivation seek this or that object, or seek good for this or that end or individual.  Only good will, which seems prebuilt into humanity, but also into all rational beings, is a rational, impartial, objective motivation, one that is not fulfilled or frustrated by this or that situation, or by this or that person achieving their ends.

Once again, let us consider the three-part soul of Plato, which Aristotle adopted for his three kinds of virtue.  For Plato, reason corresponds with the head, spirit with the heart, and desire with the stomach.  Plato identifies the second, middle level with honor, and Kant similarly identifies will with honor, such that will and spirit can be considered as equivalent terms, identifying a motivational center which sits between reason above and desires below.  In terms of the form of the good city, Plato puts the police, also known as guardians, above the chaotic desiring mass of people below, but beneath the philosopher-kings who reason above.  Kant argues that will, when it is ruled by pure reason alone, and not by the desire for any particular thing, is also purely good in itself.  Thus, for Plato and Aristotle, will is employed by reason to rule over the many desires, keeping them in check.  For Kant, good will is also employed by reason, but as the only pure form of motivation, when all desires are not simply held in check, but ignored entirely.  It is possible for desires to be in accord with good will, such as when we do good for others because it makes them happy, and making others happy is the rational thing to do. Kant argues that we should make others happy whether or not it brings us happiness, but simply because it is the rational thing to do.

For Kant, it is possible for our desires to be situationally in accord with what is rational and best for ourselves and others equally, but this is not because it makes us happy, but rather that we have a will which is respectful of the form of the rational.  Will does not get in the way of desires which are in accord with what is rational, but will is not ultimately for weighing this desire against another desire, as this is the job of reason ruling overall.  To use Plato’s analogy of the form of the city, for Kant the police are first and foremost for taking their orders strictly from reason itself, and not for weighing what desire of whose is better or worse.  It would seem that reason can make all the decisions itself, and will is good, and thus will is good will when it listens to reason alone, regardless of what any of the desires want, or whether or not they are in accord with what reason has decided.  While Hume said that reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions, Kant completely disagrees, and thinks that reason should rule above over all of the passions, and good will serves as the motive of reason, itself also above and beyond all of the passions.

Kant argues that goodwill is not good because of what it does, because of what good or bad results are obtained intentionally or unintentionally by its actions, but good because it is intrinsically so.  It is a jewel that shines by its own light, even if it remains buried and does nothing.  Unfortunately, we can thus never prove that goodwill is good using results as evidence of any kind, something Mill later criticized specifically in Kant’s ethics.  Kant says that all good reasoning is for the purposes of maintaining good will, which is good in itself, which desires simply further goodwill, without anything beyond this, even happiness.  Kant sneaks survival in here however, as good will wills itself to continue, which Kant says contradicts and thus invalidates all forms of suicide, dishonesty, and political revolt, his key examples.  Doing what is good simply because it is good and not because it results in anything in particular is doing one’s duty.  Kant gives the example of a merchant not overcharging an inexperienced customer, charging a child the same as an adult even if they could get away with it. Kant argues that this might make a merchant happy, but beyond this, it is the merchant’s respect for the form of what is right that makes the action good and moral, not the happiness in being fair to others.

Furthering goodwill is about securing survival and then happiness, but secondarily and indirectly.  Kant argues that the moral worth of an action is not in the expected effect, as good results could be brought about by unconscious robots.  Only a free, rational and conscious being, what Kant calls a person, which could include angels or aliens, could do what is in accord with universal law just because it is good.  It is here that Kant makes a gigantic leap for humankind in his reasoning to weld universal reason and pure good will together.  Kant argues that any good-willing, rational being should come to the conclusion, the central, guiding moral principle, that they should never act in a way that they do not want everyone else to act always, everywhere, or as Kant writes it, “I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”  Later in the text, he says, “There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”  We use reason to extrapolate our individual action into a universal for all, and ask ourselves if we would wish for everyone to do what we want to do to check it against our good will.

Kant argues that there are 1) actions done out of respect for duty, which reason can determine is the form we should universally follow regardless of what consequences happen, 2) actions done out of inclination, which satisfy this or that desire, which happen to align with reason and duty, and 3) actions done out of inclination which are not in line with reason and duty.  While it is easy to see that, for Kant, the first are good, and the third are bad, it is not clear whether or not the second sort, when our desires align with our duty, are good or bad, and Kant argues that we can’t tell in such situations whether or not the acts are good or bad.  Some have read Kant and sadly concluded that Kant does not think it is possible to do good when the act makes us happy, such that being happy in making others happy is not good, which many reject outright as senseless.  Technically, Kant does not say that all actions that make us happy are immoral, but simply that it is not possible to tell when we are doing our duty and are happy to do it that we are doing things because of duty and not simply because it makes us happy.  It is possible that we are doing good when doing the right thing makes us happy, but Kant argues that we can only tell that an action is done from duty when we do what is right in spite of the fact that we don’t desire to do it, which shows it is good will obeying reason and not happiness which motivates us.

Hume, like Epicurus argued before, and Mill argued after, does not think that reason should be superior to the passions, and so taking pleasure in doing good for others could be considered the highest form of good that there is.  It could be argued that if we do what is right, but take no pleasure in it, we do not do what is right from a good character that enjoys it, but rather out of fear of not doing what is expected of us by others.  Aristotle’s concept of virtue and good character does not fit well with Kant this way.  We can also consider Confucius, who argued that we must have the right intent with the right outer form of action, as well as his Neo-Confucian follower Wang Yangming, who argued that we should find ourselves wanting what is good and reacting to things with emotions that show we love the good and hate the bad.  While it is possible to see Confucius as in line with Kant, if we assume that the right intent should be solely good will rather than this or that desire, it is harder to reconcile this with Wang Yangming’s later position, as he criticizes those who do not have good inner feelings with right outer actions.

It is important to note here that Kant does not think it is possible to determine whether or not actions are good by how they do bring about this or that end as consequences.  Rather, it is how actions are motivated that makes them good, whether or not they bring about what they aim for, or even if they bring about the opposite.  On the one hand, it is true, and Kant uses it as fundamental to his argument, that we do consider those with pure hearts who act for the good of others to be good in what they intended even if they do not bring about what they intended.  However, on the other hand, Kant argues that we cannot use experience or evaluations of consequences at all to determine if an act is good or bad, as this would lead us astray from determining the act to be good or bad solely based on its motivation, which is too far for many, and opposite the position of John Stuart Mill, who argues that we should evaluate actions solely in terms of consequences. Kant did not know Mill, who came after him, but he argues that Mill’s position is immoral.

Kant says that nothing could be more fatal to morality than that we should wish to derive it from examples.  Even Jesus, whom Kant calls, “the Holy One of the Gospels,” can only be recognized as an excellent example by how he is in line with the rational and universal, such as having good will equally for others and for oneself.  Kant says we frequently can’t find a single example of a human action that is done purely for duty alone beyond all possible doubt, and that many philosophers have spoken of duty as an instrument for the greatest possible harmony and success of our desires and interests beyond mere duty.  This is because we always act in complex circumstances, but we can feel and think with purity, which is the only way we know good will and duty to be good. Kant says that many think his position is impossible or impractical, but if we venture beyond the universal, we fall into “self-contradictions, uncertainties, obscurities and instabilities.”  If we compromise universal morals, weighing them against our present situation and interests, somewhat moral and somewhat circumstantial depending on the situation, we are “corrupting them at their very source, destroying their worth.”  If it is the duty of a sea-captain to always go down with the ship, it corrupts our adherence to duty itself to allow the feelings that you or your children have about your particular circumstances.

This is why Kant thinks that the only test for an action is the categorical imperative, to use reason to evaluate whether or not the act could always be done, and not experience to evaluate whether or not the act had good or bad consequences.  However, we could also argue that if an act could not be universally done in accord with the categorical imperative, is this because it results in a logical contradiction, or because it has undesired consequences?  Kant himself seems to be a bit mixed in his responses, which Mill later points out in his own arguments in his Utilitarianism (1861).  Sometimes Kant argues that there would be a logical contradiction in reason when we examine an action in thought, but he sometimes argues as if always doing something would result in undesirable consequences that we would all want to avoid, such as society and social commerce collapsing from total distrust if we were to always lie to each other. It is confusing and difficult to tell because Kant is thinking in terms of thought experiments, and thus can always frame what would be bad consequences in experience as mere contradictions in reason, before we acquire the experience, trusting reason to figure everything out universally beforehand.

It seems that we can frame bad actions in both ways.  It is a bit like what the contemporary philosopher Zizek says about parallax view, the shift in an object’s position caused by changing our line of sight.  If we open and close either eye while looking at our finger, we can see the finger jump back and forth, and then, with both eyes open, find that the two views merge together.  If we are looking at things from the point of view of logic via reason, things are bad if they result in contradiction, and if we are looking at things from the point of view of consequence via desire, things are bad if they result in unhappiness, which is, in a sense, in contradiction with our desires for happiness. The reason Kant says that we cannot tell if an act is moral and good when it makes us happy is because we are looking at it from both points of view, from the overlapping point of view of reason and point of view of happiness, and we can only tell if something is moral, and thus truly good, when looking at it from the point of reason alone, which we must do when we do something that makes us unhappy.

Consider the Guy with the Butcher Knife thought experiment, not an idea of Kant’s but an illustrative example used in ethics classes today. Let us say you are at home, and the doorbell rings. You answer it, and your friend runs in looking afraid and hides in your kitchen. A minute later the doorbell rings again, you answer it, and a scary guy with a butcher knife asks you where your friend is.  Kant would not be against shutting the door and saying nothing to the scary guy, but Kant would argue that it is wrong to lie to him and say you don’t know or that your friend took off down the street the other way. Even though we can assume that if you lie it would improve your friend’s chances of living in good health, Kant would argue that this would be wrong, even if your friend ends up killed by the guy you could have lied to.  For Kant, it is always wrong to lie, regardless of the consequences. With the Jains, we considered that those who are aiming for ultimate purity apart from violence, lies and all other vices should not be put in charge of guarding Anne Frank in the attic, as when the Gestapo come knocking, they can only acquire bad karma and impurity if they find it useful to lie.

We can contrast this with the position of Mill and Utilitarianism we will study next, which argues that in some circumstances the lie is the lesser of two evils and one should seek the greater happiness of yourself, your friend and society rather than stick dogmatically to principles and laws.  Moralists like Kant believe that we should anchor ethics in good beginnings while empiricists and utilitarians believe we should anchor ethics in good ends. Kant believes that one must start with good intentions and principles no matter the consequences, while Mill believes that one should aim at the best consequences no matter the principles or intentions one has. As usual, both sides agree that one should have good intentions, principles and consequences, but they come down on opposite sides when arguing for what is the essence or importance of the matter. Both argue that God and Christianity are based in their own form of ethics, and thus are much like the ancient Chinese philosophers, who disagree with each other but each argue that their way was the way of the ancient sage kings. In logic, this is known as an appeal to authority, which is sometimes a fallacy, but there can be legitimate and useful appeals to authority.

While Kant’s position is strong in its universalism, never wavering from principle, it has its drawbacks.  Few would argue that it is never acceptable to lie, even if it means saving human lives.  Most, when faced with the butcher knife guy thought experiment, find it acceptable to lie if it means improving the chances of living for one’s friend.  One recent philosopher, Bernard Williams, who taught at UC Berkeley, even went so far as to accuse Kant and other moralists of moral self-indulgence, valuing the preservation of principle over the preservation of human life.  Of course, Kant and other moralists would argue that sticking to principles is the essence of what makes life truly valuable and meaningful, and if we compromise our principles depending on the situation, we put our value of human life in danger itself. Williams, inspired by Nietzsche, also argued against Mill’s ethics, which he saw as similarly too limited for complex situations.

Kant assumed that human reason, when pure and objective, can determine morals that are entirely non-contradictory, as he assumed about logic, mathematics and science as well.  What happens in situations when our morals contradict themselves?  There are two possible cases of contradiction that can arise given a set of morals that are supposed to be followed universally. First, two morals can contradict each other.  We can see this in the thought experiment of the guy with the butcher knife.  If we have two morals, such as Do Not Lie AND Preserve Human Life, we can find ourselves in situations where if we do not lie we fail to preserve human life.  Which moral takes precedence?  Which do we follow at the expense of the other?  If we are supposed to follow each and every one of our morals universally, regardless of situation, we should not have to choose.  Isaac Asimov, the celebrated science fiction author, explored this issue in his novel I, Robot (which was later turned into a movie starring Will Smith that barely resembles the book I loved as a kid).  While robots are programmed to preserve the lives of humans, follow human orders, and preserve their own existence, situations arise in which these cannot all be followed that the programmers cannot anticipate.  What happens if a robot is ordered to do a task that will destroy itself, but it knows that this will mean it cannot later save human beings or follow further orders?

Second, a single moral can contradict itself, if we are pulled in two ways by the same rule in the same situation.  We can see this in the example of the trolley problem thought experiment, which was invented by English philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967.  What if a trolley is going to hit five people, unless we pull a lever that will make it change course and kill only one instead?  Either way, people will die, and the only way to preserve life is to act in a way that will kill someone else.  In Asimov’s I, Robot, there are situations where two humans give conflicting orders, and the robot must determine which order to follow and which to ignore. In this classic ethical dilemma, which was invented to test Kant and Mill’s theories in classrooms, Kant would have to argue that we should not pull the switch or get involved at all if we wish to be morally blameless, but this would result in a greater number of deaths, and we would be guilty of moral self-indulgence according to Bernard Williams. Mill would argue we are obligated to pull the lever, and take fewer lives as the best consequence overall. Kant would say we should not get involved and pull the switch, while Mill would say we should get involved and pull the switch.

Interestingly, others have added elements to the trolly car problem in philosophy, but also in psychology, and found that when the switch is transformed into a person who must be pushed off a bridge to save the five people, far fewer people are willing to push someone with their hands then throw a switch. This resembles the infamous Milgram experiment in psychology, in which a disturbing number of people will shock someone in another room by pushing a button if they are ordered to do so by a doctor in a lab coat who reassures them that everything is fine. In his book On Killing (1995), Grossman argues it is known by military psychologists such as himself that the more technology between ourselves and others, the more we are willing to do harm to others, such that far fewer are willing to stab someone next to them than to shoot someone farther away, and far fewer are willing to shoot someone they can see than to bomb many who can’t be seen from a plane far above. In the recent video game Prey (2017), the player wakes up as a test subject, is asked about the trolley problem with a switch, and then pushing someone from a bridge, and then finally whether or not the player would throw themselves off the bridge, committing suicide to save others. For Kant, you should not commit suicide for any reason, but you should also not act in a way that directly causes harm, which likely means you should allow the trolley to kill the larger number. Studies have shown that the majority of people would pull the switch, but also that very few volunteer to sacrifice themselves or a loved one as a substitute for the five on the track. This shows that neither Kant nor Mill is simply the way each of us sees things, which depends on the situation.

Humans in ancient times recognized the dilemma of happiness versus duty.  The central and most celebrated part of the Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic, is the Bhagavadgita, the story of crown prince Arjuna hesitating before fighting a civil war against his family and former friends and teachers.  He is counseled by Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu that as a warrior it is Arjuna’s duty to fight the just fight even if is against everyone else, and at the cost of the lives of all his former friends and family.  In the peak moment, Krishna reveals his true self to Arjuna, which is so dazzling, complex and monstrous that Arjuna trembles with fright.  Krishna teaches Arjuna that if you do your duty not for yourself but for the cosmos, you are free of doubt and death.  In this case, Arjuna is supposed to obey the god and his duty to the cosmos above obeying and preserving the lives of his family and friends.

Aristotle similarly argues, while discussing matters of logic, that it is never right to kill your father, but among the Triballi tribe, the gods sometimes demand it.  Since the gods are one’s super-parents and one’s obligations to them supersedes one’s obligations to one’s parents, Aristotle says that the Triballi rightly sacrifice their fathers.  Once again, obedience to the gods, one’s super-parents, trumps obedience to one’s parents.  We find a similar tragic dilemma in the ancient Greek play Antigone by Sophocles.  Antigone has two brothers who fight over the title of King of Thebes.  After both slay each other, Creon takes the throne and declares that one brother is to be honored as a hero but the other is to be refused burial and left to decay on the battlefield.  Antigone, drawn between obeying the dictates of the state and the honor of her family, defies the new king and tries to bury her brother and is condemned to death in court, and buried alive.  Antigone is loyal, but she must make a choice: Which is the greater loyalty, family or state?  Either way, loyalty to someone is disloyalty to someone else, just as freedom for something is also a lack of freedom from that thing. Recall that Confucius said it was terrible for a son to turn in his father over a stollen sheep.

Discussion Question: Each student in each group should pick an ethical dilemma discussed, such as the Butcher Knife and Trolley Car thought experiments. What would you do in the situation, and why?

Also, here is a ridiculous Spanish public service announcement about Kant and riding public transit.