Kant’s Moral Theory

Like Utilitarianism, Imannual Kant’s moral theory is grounded in a theory of intrinsic value. But where the utilitarian take happiness, conceived of as pleasure and the absence of pain to be what has intrinsic value, Kant takes the only think to have moral worth for its own sake to be the good will. Persons, conceived of as autonomous rational moral agents, are beings that have intrinsic moral worth. This value of persons makes them deserving of moral respect. Kant’s moral theory is often referred to as the “respect for persons” theory of morality.

Kant calls his fundamental moral principle the Categorical Imperative. An imperative is just a command. The notion of a categorical imperative can be understood in contrast to that of a hypothetical imperative. A hypothetical imperative tells you what to do in order to achieve some goal. For instance, “if you want to get a good grade in calculus, work the assignment regularly.” This claim tells you what to do in order to get a good grade in calculus. But it doesn’t tell you what to do if you don’t care about getting a good grade. What is distinctive about a categorical imperative is that it tells you how to act regardless of what end or goal you might desire. Kant holds that if there is a fundamental law of morality, it is a categorical imperative. Taking the fundamental principle of morality to be a categorical imperative implies that moral reasons override other sorts of reasons. You might, for instance, think you have a self interested reason to cheat on exam. But if morality is grounded in a categorical imperative, then your moral reason against cheating overrides your self interested reason.

Here are two formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative:

CIa: Always treat persons (including yourself) and ends in themselves, never merely as a means to your own ends.

CIb: Act only on that maxim that you can consistently will to be a universal law.

Kant takes these formulations to be different ways of expressing the same underlying principle of respect for persons. They certainly don’t appear to be synonymous. But we might take them to express the same thing in that each formulation would guide one to act in the same way.

The formulation (CIa), tells us to treat individuals as ends in themselves. That is just to say that persons should be treated as beings that have intrinsic value. To say that persons have intrinsic value is to say that they have value independent of their usefulness for this or that purpose. (CIa) does not tell us that we can never use a person for your own purposes. But it tells us we should never use a person merely as a means to your own ends. What is the difference? We treat people as a means to our own ends in ways that are not morally problematic quite often. When I go to the post office, I treat the clerk as a means to my end of sending a letter. But I do not treat that person merely as a means to my own end. I pursue my end of sending a letter through my interaction with the clerk only with the understanding that the clerk is acting autonomously in serving me. My interaction with the clerk is morally acceptable so long as the clerk is serving me voluntarily, or acting autonomously for his own reasons. By contrast, we use someone merely as a means to our own ends if we force them to do our will, or if we deceive them into doing our will. Coercion and deception are paradigm violations of the categorical imperative. In coercing or deceiving another person, we disrupt their autonomy and violate their will. This is what the categorical imperative forbids. Respecting persons requires refraining from violating their autonomy.

Now let’s consider the second formulation. (CIb) tells us to act only on “maxims” that are universalizable. A maxim here, is to be understood as a generalized motivation or intention for acting in a certain way under a certain set of circumstances. A maxim is universalizable if we can will that everyone act accordance with the maxim.

Utilitarian moral theory evaluates the rightness or wrongness of an action entirely in terms of the consequences of that action. Theories that take the moral state of an action or rule for actin to depend on its consequences are known as consequentialist theories. Kant’s respect for persons view, on the other hand, is a “deontological theory.” A deontological theory is one that takes the moral state of actions to depend in part factors other than consequences. In Kant’s respect for persons theory, the moral status of an action depends in part on the motivation for acting.

To say that a maxim is universalizable is to say that one can consistently will that every one act in accordance with that maxim.