Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Immanuel Kant Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals Translator: Thomas Kingsmill Abbott

“A maxim is a subjective principle of action, and must be distinguished from the objective principle, namely, practical law. The former contains the practical rule set by reason according to the conditions of the subject (often its ignorance or its inclinations), so that it is the principle on which the subject acts; but the law is the objective principle valid for every rational being, and is the principle on which it ought to act that is an imperative.…

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. …

If now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any transgression of duty… we assume the liberty of making an exception in our own favour or (just for this time only) in favour of our inclination. [There is] an antagonism of inclination to the precept of reason, whereby the universality of the principle is changed into a mere generality, so that the practical principle of reason shall meet the maxim half way. …

We have thus established at least this much, that if duty is a conception which is to have any import and real legislative authority for our actions, it can only be expressed in categorical and not at all in hypothetical imperatives. … We have not yet, however, advanced so far as to prove a priori that there actually is such an imperative, that there is a practical law which commands absolutely of itself and without any other impulse, and that the following of this law is duty.

Thus every empirical element is not only quite incapable of being an aid to the principle of morality, but is even highly prejudicial to the purity of morals, for the proper and inestimable worth of an absolutely good will consists just in this, that the principle of action is free from all influence of contingent grounds, which alone experience can furnish. We cannot too much or too often repeat our warning against this lax and even mean habit of thought which seeks for its principle amongst empirical motives and laws; for human reason in its weariness is glad to rest on this pillow, and in a dream of sweet illusions … it substitutes for morality a bastard patched up from limbs of various derivation, which looks like anything one chooses to see in it, only not like virtue to one who has once beheld her in her true form.

The question then is this: “Is it a necessary law for all rational beings that they should always judge of their actions by maxims of which they can themselves will that they should serve as universal laws?”[Where:] The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. …

If then there is a supreme practical principle or, in respect of the human will, a categorical imperative, it must be one which, being drawn from the conception of that which is necessarily an end for everyone because it is an end in itself, constitutes an objective principle of will, and can therefore serve as a universal practical law. The foundation of this principle is: rational nature exists as an end in itself. Man necessarily conceives his own existence as being so; so far then this is a subjective principle of human actions. But every other rational being regards its existence similarly, just on the same rational principle that holds for me: so that it is at the same time an objective principle, from which as a supreme practical law all laws of the will must be capable of being deduced. Accordingly the practical imperative will be as follows: So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only. We will now inquire whether this can be practically carried out.

… Hence follows the third practical principle of the will, which is the ultimate condition of its harmony with universal practical reason, viz.: the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislative will.

The conception of the will of every rational being as one which must consider itself as giving in all the maxims of its will universal laws …  leads to another which depends on it and is very fruitful, namely that of a kingdom of ends. …. By a kingdom I understand the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws. …

Morality consists … in the reference of all action to the legislation which alone can render a kingdom of ends possible. This legislation must (sic) be capable of existing in every rational being and of emanating from his will … .

Concluding Remark

The speculative employment of reason with respect to nature leads to the absolute necessity of some supreme cause of the world: the practical employment of reason with a view to freedom leads also to absolute necessity, but only of the laws of the actions of a rational being as such. Now it is an essential principle of reason, however employed, to push its knowledge to a consciousness of its necessity (without which it would not be rational knowledge). It is, however, an equally essential restriction of the same reason that it can neither discern the necessity of what is or what happens, nor of what ought to happen, unless a condition is supposed on which it is or happens or ought to happen. In this way, however, by the constant inquiry for the condition, the satisfaction of reason is only further and further postponed. Hence it unceasingly seeks the unconditionally necessary and finds itself forced to assume it, although without any means of making it comprehensible to itself, happy enough if only it can discover a conception which agrees with this assumption. It is therefore no fault in our deduction of the supreme principle of morality, but an objection that should be made to human reason in general, that it cannot enable us to conceive the absolute necessity of an unconditional practical law (such as the categorical imperative must be). It cannot be blamed for refusing to explain this necessity by a condition, that is to say, by means of some interest assumed as a basis, since the law would then cease to be a supreme law of reason. And thus while we do not comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, we yet comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly demanded of a philosophy which strives to carry its principles up to the very limit of human reason.”

My Comments

Overview

From a mathematical viewpoint an ‘unconditional necessity’ seems logically incomprehensible and it seems foolhardy to make groundless ‘assumptions’. But Kant can be taken to suggest a role for mathematics, not just in complying with the imperatives of ‘practical reason’ (as commonly employed) but also in testing the assumptions underlying them as a kind of ‘extra-rationality’.

An adaptation

Kant’s categorical imperative is formulated as: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.  If we do not suppose, as Kant does, that absolute imperatives exist, we can still adapt his imperative as follows:

1. That one ‘could’ ‘will’ the law if there was no specific reason not to. Thus one might ‘will’ ‘the known laws of science’ to be ‘natural laws’ as long as there was at that time no specific reason to think them false.
2. That, as with scientific ‘laws’, one should not commit to a maxim as a universal law or dogma for all time, but should only act on them to the extent that no specific reason not to do so has occurred to you since you last willed it.
3. That a cautionary ‘maxim’, as in scientific good practice, might be to not ‘will’ that something should become a universal law unless and until you have considered the consequences, which might reasonably be regarded as including debating them quite widely, including with those from other cultures, which debates perhaps ‘ought’ to include relevant experimentation, including wide-ranging ‘thought experiments’.
4. That, as in the sciences, in any particular instance there may be multiple credible maxims (such as ‘drive on the left’ or ‘drive on the right’) and so one needs some maxim as to how to handle these. Perhaps (in line with (3) above and good scientific practice) one should maintain them as ‘credible universal maxims’ and advocate taking all them into account in one’s acts, seeking to resolve the issues as far as seems reasonable. (I.e., in Kant replace ‘that maxim’ with ‘those maxims’.)
5. Where, as often in the sciences, maxims do not determine a unique act, one needs some way of deciding what to do. If we regard maxims as important one might regard oneself as part of a community of maxim developers that wishes to follow (1-4) above and seek to contribute to (4) by seeking to increase the community’s explorations of maxims without challenging community cohesion.

I thus suggest the following ‘pragmatic suggestion’ as an alternative to Kant’s categorical imperative:

Seek to develop, test and maintain the broadest credible range of maxims that allow for your ‘proper’ uncertainty and which you now have a minimum of specific reasons to distrust, to inform future activity.

Potential applications

Here, as for Kant ‘, a maxim ‘contains the practical rule set by reason according to the conditions of the subject (often its ignorance or its inclinations)’. In extreme cases it could be some formal rule or trust in one’s instinct, but perhaps one should make it explicit that any opportunity one has to review maxims before acting on them should be taken to consider any new specific reasons for doubting them. This suggestion is silent about what do if one finds specific reasons to doubt all one’s maxims. Ask a friend?

The suggestion also leaves open the characterisation of ‘proper’ uncertainty, so this needs to be covered by the maxims ‘according to the condition of the subject’. As a minimum, no maxim should rule out the future consideration of potential ‘specific reasons to distrust’, and hence no maxim can be a dogma. On the other hand, if psychological uncertainty goes beyond that ‘reasonably’ justified by experience then it may not be ‘proper’, and the intention of my wording is to motivate the development of a less gratuitously cautious maxim. Again, perhaps ask a friend?

The suggestion also leaves open the question of ‘credibility’. Candidate maxims might include ‘what goes around may come around’ and ‘what you do can affect what others do, which can rebound on the future you’. I imagine that these are ‘credible’, even for those with no explicit experience of such effects. Such maxims go some way to addressing Kant’s social concerns, but basing them on experience rather than dogma.

Implications

Kant reasons as if that we can rely on our reasoning to such an extent that we can have absolute knowledge with absolute practical implications. The practical suggestion calls for some reformed concepts.

I suggest that ‘knowledge’ can be ‘knowledge of what is currently credible, based on specific tests, with no or only recognized anomalies’, as in the sciences, and so cannot be absolutely relied upon to survive any novel tests or experiences.

I suggest that reason might be relied upon to produce knowledge in the above sense, in line with our practical suggestion, but not necessarily to have access to ‘absolute truth’ about ‘reality’.

My own view is conformance to reason and the ‘practical suggestion’ might reasonably considered ‘moral’ and ‘good’, depending on the specific maxims. Applying any maxims dogmatically seems to me ‘immoral’ and ‘not good’. On a practical level, I think there is something like a ‘categorical imperative’ to improve our thinking about possible futures and ‘kingdoms of ends’.

See Also

Chamberlin: “I believe that one of the greatest moral reforms that lies immediately before us consists in the general introduction into social and civic life of that habit of mental procedure which is known in investigation as the method of multiple working hypotheses.”

Dave Marsay