Kant’s Grounding

1. Kant’s critical investigations in the realm of theoretical philosophy (logic and metaphysics) had made it clear that practical philosophy, that is, the philosophical theory of morality, could no longer be grounded on our alleged metaphysical knowledge of the inherent values of the nature of things, for in accordance with his results we simply cannot possibly have this sort of knowledge in the traditional sense.

2. Therefore, Kant’s project in the Grounding is to base the objectivity of morality on entirely new, a priori, non-empirical grounds, regardless of any empirical knowledge we may have of human nature and happiness.

3. As he states in the Preface: “We may call all philosophy empirical, so far as it is based on grounds of experience: on the other hand, that which delivers its doctrines from a priori principles alone we may call pure philosophy. When the latter is merely formal it is logic; if it is restricted to definite objects of the understanding it is metaphysic. In this way there arises the idea of a twofold metaphysic- a metaphysic of nature and a metaphysic of morals. Physics will thus have an empirical and also a rational part. It is the same with Ethics; but here the empirical part might have the special name of practical anthropology, the name morality being appropriated to the rational part.” [Note that this quote is from a different translation. You should be able to find the corresponding passage in your translation.]

4. So, as far as Kant is concerned, Aristotle’s Ethics can at best be regarded as an exercise in what he calls practical anthropology, but in no way the purely a priori metaphysics of morals, the grounding of which should consist of the purely synthetic a priori laws of freedom, the laws describing the only way in which the necessary determination of free will is possible. Note here that for Kant freedom of the will is not the lack of its determination, not even its contingency, in the sense of non-necessary spontaneity in some action gratuite, but its self-determination in prescribing its laws to itself. These laws are precisely the laws of freedom sought in morality, which are free from any sort of extrinsic determination, but necessary in determining the only possible way in which the free will can determine itself without any extrinsic motive either in terms of antecedent causes and inclinations, or consequent results, rewards or punishment.

5. The method Kant follows in the Grounding is two-fold: first he proceeds analytically, from the assumption of our intuitive moral sense to the recognition and formulation of the pure law of morality, the categorical imperative, and then synthetically, examining the function of this principle in properly grounding whatever is valid in that intuition: “I have adopted in this work the method which I think most suitable, proceeding analytically from common knowledge to the determination of its ultimate principle, and again descending synthetically from the examination of this principle and its sources to the common knowledge in which we find it employed.”

6. In this spirit, Kant sets out to search in our moral experience for what we may regard as absolutely, intrinsically, and unconditionally morally good: an absolutely good will. In fact, it turns out that its recognition is not as easy as one might think. Although there are easy cases, in some cases it seems to be very difficult to separate in any empirical situation that absolutely good will which according to Kant only deserves to be called intrinsically morally good.

7. For making his point clear, Kant considers four possible cases in which an act of will is contrasted with the norm of duty, what ought to be done in the given situation.

8. The first case, when the act of will goes against duty is clear: an act of will that determines to do what ought not to be done, clearly cannot be called morally good. (For example, if a merchant overcharges you, he is clearly not doing anything morally good, for he is doing something that he ought not to do in the given situation.)

9. The will in the second case -- when the act is in accord with duty, but is done for the sake of some selfish purpose or on account of some other extrinsic motivation, such as to avoid punishment -- is again quite clearly not morally good; the act may well be legal and not punishable, but certainly not something morally praiseworthy. (The same merchant may not overcharge you in this case, but he is doing what he ought to do only to avoid possible punishment. Indeed, in this case he would overcharge you  if he knew that he could get away with it. So, in this case you would certainly not praise him for his honesty, just because he happened not to overcharge you for fear of possible punishment.)

10. The third case is more difficult. In this case the act is in accordance with duty, and is not performed for some selfish purpose; it is something that simply stems from a natural inclination to do what one ought to do. Yet, by Kant’s strict standards, even this act cannot count as the embodiment of a truly and absolutely good act, precisely because it is determined by something that is extrinsic to the act itself, and so it is not really the self-determination of the will to do something good, but the determination of the will by something else, although it does drive the will in the direction of something good. (Our merchant in this case may be just a good-natured, nice fellow, who wouldn’t even think of overcharging you. Although this person is doing the right thing, and he is definitely neither bad, nor self-interested in any way, still, his action does not require of him any special reflection, or conscious effort to do what is right, so his action would still not deserve any special praise.)

11. It is only the fourth case that would in Kant’s view be an example of an act of an absolutely good will, when the act is performed not only in accordance with duty, but purely from duty, without any other, extrinsic determination, excluding even the inclinations of character. (Our merchant in this case would be under extreme pressure to get money by any means necessary, yet he would not overcharge you, not because of fear, for he would know a surefire way to get away with it, nor because of inclination, for everything in his character and in the circumstances would urge him to take your money, for he would know that you would not even notice the loss, and that he would be able to save someone by it, but for the sole reason that overcharging you would not be the right thing to do.) This case, according to Kant, is also exemplified in the Scriptural command of unconditional love; indeed, that precept of love is nothing but the self-imposed rule of the absolutely selfless good will (whence it has nothing to do with the feeling of attraction: you are expected to love thy neighbor as the image of God even if s/he happens to be repulsive – although, of course, you are not supposed to love his/her repulsive features, whatever those may be).

12. It is on the basis of the careful analysis of this fourth case that Kant first arrives at the first formulation of the categorical imperative: “I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law”.

13. Note here the important Kantian distinction between maxim and practical law: the maxim is the subjective principle of my action, prescribing what I should do; the practical law is the objective principle of volition prescribing what ought to be done. The categorical imperative is the command prescribing that the maxim of your action has to be such that when you want to act on it, you should also be able to want it to be a universal practical law. Any maxim, and correspondingly any practical law, that does not meet this formal criterion is morally invalid. (See Kant’s quite clear application of the principle as such a criterion to the case of lying on p. 15, at #403.) We shall see more clearly how this is supposed to work in connection with the second section.

14. Kant arrives at this formulation from three propositions he has established on the basis of the fourth case: (a) an action must be done from duty in order to have moral worth; (b) an action done from duty has its moral worth not from the purpose that is to be attained by it, but from the maxim according to which the action is determined; (c) duty is the necessity of an action done out of respect for the law. The reason for (a) is clear from the contrast of the third and the fourth case. The reason for (b) is also clear if we consider that the end to be achieved by the action is extrinsic to the act of will itself, and Kant is seeking the principle of self-determination of a good will regardless of anything extrinsic to it: hence the only thing that remains to be considered in the self-determination of the will is the principle of any act of self-determination itself, that is, the maxim determining the action. But from this there follows (c), because the duty from which the action must be done in order to have moral worth according to (a) has to be precisely that objective law to which the maxim of the action must conform for having its moral worth according to (b).

15. All in all, the principal result of the first section is that the supreme principle of morality Kant has been looking for is to be the formal, universal, necessary, a priori principle of the self-determination of an absolutely good will in itself, and this principle has to be the categorical imperative formulated above.

16. The second section will have the task of establishing the general conditions of possibility for the categorical imperative, on the basis of which it will be possible for Kant to provide several different, but equivalent, formulations of the principle.

17. In order to do so, Kant first addresses the issue of whether the absolutely good will he has been looking for in the first section is ever exemplified. For although our overt actions may be beneficent and generally good in their outcome, we may never know whether our motivations were absolutely pure: “for if we look more closely at our planning and striving, we everywhere come upon the dear self”. So, even though our overt actions may by all appearances be good, if their determination is not stemming from the pure desire of wanting to do what is the right thing to do (what ought to be done, i.e., what is our duty to do in the given situation), then despite all appearances (self-deceptive ones included), our actions are not really good.

18. Nevertheless, Kant argues that despite the inscrutability of our true motives, and so of the true worth of our actions, we don’t have a chance to understand moral value itself in any possible empirical situation unless we clarify its a priori principle, as an ideal that by its very nature fills us with awe, whether it is ever empirically realized or not: “For the pure conception of duty, unmixed with any foreign addition of empirical attractions, and, in a word, the conception of the moral law, exercises on the human heart, by way of reason alone (which first becomes aware with this that it can of itself be practical), an influence so much more powerful than all other springs* which may be derived from the field of experience, that, in the consciousness of its worth, it despises the latter, and can by degrees become their master; whereas a mixed ethics, compounded partly of motives drawn from feelings and inclinations, and partly also of conceptions of reason, must make the mind waver between motives which cannot be brought under any principle, which lead to good only by mere accident and very often also to evil.” [p. 22, #411]

19. So [on p. 23 in the last paragraph] Kant sets out to provide us with a purely metaphysical investigation of the supreme principle, from the most general conditions such a principle must meet.

20. First, since such a principle must be the principle of the self-determination of the will, and the will is nothing but reason in its practical application, the supreme principle must be the formal precondition of all practical necessity determined by reason as something good.

21. Now if reason is in full command over the will, then Kant says we have the case of a holy will, i.e., one that never strays from the self-determination of reason under the influence of some extrinsic inclination. For such a will morality is not problematic: it always does what ought to be done, whence in this case what ought to be done and what the agent would do simply coincide. Therefore, in the case of a holy will there is no place for an imperative prescribing an objective law compelling the subjective determination of the will, for the subjective determination is already in place as the law of action determined by pure goodness alone.

22. On the other hand, in the case of an imperfect will (as is human will), which is not determined by reason’s recognition of what is good alone, but also by various inclinations and considerations of prudence (in the sense of mere goal-rationality), there is always a discrepancy between the objective law and the subjective determination of the will. Hence, in this case there is the need for an imperative, commanding the conformity of the two.

23. Now, all imperatives are either hypothetical or categorical. Whenever an imperative is conditioned upon some end of the action commanded by the imperative, the imperative is hypothetical (“If you want to achieve that, you have to do this.”) A categorical imperative, on the other hand, is one that is unconditional.

24. But then, since the supreme principle of morality is to be the imperative of the unconditional self-determination of an absolutely good will, it can only have the form of a categorical imperative.

25. Kant is careful to distinguish the former sort of imperatives from the latter. In order to do so, he distinguishes three types of imperatives, the first two of which are hypothetical and only the third is categorical. First, he distinguishes rules of skill (“if you want a good job, you have to get a diploma”), as the practical rules one needs to follow to achieve certain particular ends. Second, he distinguishes counsels of prudence, which are general precepts to reach happiness (“if you want to be happy, you have to get a good job”). Third, he distinguishes laws of morality, which are the absolute, unconditional precepts of moral behavior (e.g., the Ten Commandments are such laws).

26. It is at this point that Kant introduces the idea that the possibility of a categorical imperative is problematic, whence its possibility requires a special sort of explanation, which Kant calls a transcendental deduction.

27. The problematic character of the categorical imperative becomes clear by contrasting it with the unproblematic character of hypothetical imperatives. The possibility of a hypothetical imperative is unproblematic because it is based on an analytic proposition: “whoever wants the end, has to want the means”.

28. On the other hand, the possibility of a categorical imperative cannot be based on this analytic proposition, for it is entirely unconditional. Furthermore, since it is a synthetic a priori proposition, its possibility must be divined from its content alone, but without assuming that its predicate can be analyzed from its subject.

29. Therefore, since what any categorical imperative commands is the mere unconditional conformity of the maxim of one’s action with a universal practical law, only one supreme categorical imperative is possible, namely, the one that commands this conformity itself in general, under any possible circumstance, with respect to any practical law. Hence arises the formula of universal law: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”.

30. But there being only one categorical imperative still allows several, logically equivalent formulations of the same, which renders it more easily applicable in judging the moral worth of one’s maxims.

31. In particular, it is immediately evident that since any universal law insofar as it determines laws of causality is a law of nature, and the categorical imperative is the law that determines the causality of free will, it can also be expressed in the formula of law of nature: “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature”.

32. Using these two formulations, Kant can show how the categorical imperative may work in judging the validity of several maxims in respect of various kinds of duties. In order to provide a systematic division of duties, Kant distinguishes duties to oneself and duties to others, which may be either perfect or imperfect duties, yielding a fourfold division of all duties.

33.  The four cases Kant considers on pp. 30-32 (## 422-424) are examples of 1) perfect duty to oneself, 2) perfect duty to others, 3) imperfect duty to oneself, and 4) imperfect duty to others, respectively.

34. The important difference between perfect and imperfect duties is that the maxims going against a perfect duty would always be self-contradictory if they were to be universalized (you cannot want to lie and at the same time want that everybody always should lie, for when you want to lie you also want that your lie is trusted by others, which could not be the case if universal lying were the law), whereas the maxims going against an imperfect duty might consistently be willed, but they could not be maintained as a universal law of nature (you may consistently want that nobody would ever help anybody, but if this were a law of nature you would soon find yourself in a situation in which you would need the help of others and then you would certainly want the opposite of this law).

35. From this point on Kant’s considerations become even more abstract, and increasingly metaphysical, but the gist of his ideas is relatively simple: we can find further equivalent formulations of the categorical imperative, if we consider it as being the unconditional formal law of moral conduct of any rational being. This being so, one can quite naturally arrive at the formula of the end in itself: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means”.  The reason for this formulation can be found in Kant’s idea that the only unconditionally good end must be a person, for everything else has only conditional value, being merely valuable as a means. The unconditional categorical imperative, therefore, which prescribes the conformity of one’s maxim’s with the universal law concerning ends of rational actions in general should take this form, designating persons in general as those ends per se that are never mere means. The practical interpretation of this formal principle is clear from Kant’s discussion of the four cases of duty satisfying this formulation.

36. As Kant states, “this principle of humanity is the supreme limiting condition of every man’s freedom of action”, that is to say, this is the absolute law which no human action may ever transgress. But such a law is not extrinsically imposed, indeed, it could not be forced upon the will which is essentially free. Therefore, if it is an absolute law of the free action of the will, then it must be imposed upon the will by itself, that is, the will is not merely the subject, but also the legislator of this law. Hence arises, then, the formula of the autonomy of the will: the will of every rational being is a will that legislates [its own] universal law.

37. But then, since the legislator is the sovereign of a kingdom, the free will of a rational being has to be regarded in its legislative role as the monarch in the kingdom of ends, that is, in the kingdom of other rational beings, for each one of them is subject to the same universal laws, also legislated by themselves. Therefore, “a rational being belongs to the kingdom of ends as a member when he legislates in it universal laws while also being himself subject to these laws. He belongs to it as a sovereign, when as legislator he is himself subject to the will of no other.” And this is the last formula, the formula of the kingdom of ends.

38. In the rest of the second section Kant establishes that the most fundamental principle of morality is the autonomy of the will, because it is only in this autonomy [note that the literal meaning of the original Greek phrase would be something like “self-lawfulness”] that the freedom of the will can be realized. By contrast, any action that realizes any form of heteronomy [“other-lawfulness”] of the will is extrinsically imposed upon it, and thus it diminishes its freedom.

39. But then, from this there follows the first fundamental thesis of the third section: since the autonomy of the will is nothing but its freedom, and the autonomy of the will is at the same time the will’s being subject to moral law, no will can be free that is immoral, freedom is only possible with morality, and vice versa, morality is only possible with freedom.

40. Good. But are we really free? And even if we are, is there any necessity for us to be moral? Couldn’t we just freely throw morality away? And if we cannot, how is that possible?

41. Although Kant does not quite explicitly formulate these questions, these are the questions to which the third section provides a systematic answer. To the first question Kant’s answer is that we don’t know and cannot possibly know in the metaphysical sense whether we really are free agents. This negative result, however, we do positively know from Kant’s critical philosophy (check the other summary dealing with Kant’s theoretical philosophy).

42. To the second and third questions the answer is already implicit in the necessity of the principle of autonomy of any rational being. Since the freedom of a rational being consists in its self-legislation, and the self-legislation of the will is nothing but the realization of the supreme law of morality, one cannot throw away one’s morality without one’s freedom.

43. But this is also the clue to the answer to the last question: how is it possible that there should be a law of autonomy, how can a categorical imperative be practically necessary?

44. The answer is that no rational being can conceive of itself except as being free. To be sure, an imperfectly rational being, such as a human being, may not know with certainty that he is free. But he does know that he could not conceive himself to be himself, if he did not conceive of himself as free. Therefore, for a human being to lose morality would be to lose himself, which is impossible as long he stays human.

45. The only remaining question then is this: how is a categorical imperative possible?

46. Kant’s answer is taken from his critical philosophy. Man has to think of himself as being a citizen of two worlds: in his theoretical relation, as the cognizer of the empirical world, he is part of that world and is subject to its heteronomous causality; but in his practical relation, as an agent acting autonomously, without being subjected to heteronomous natural laws, he thinks of himself as part of an intelligible world in which the laws of causality are the laws of autonomous action, the laws of freedom, and hence of morality. It is only in this way that it is possible for us to think of ourselves as moral agents living in the empirical world.