Kant’s Moral Philosophy

1. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of the modern period. He wrote important works in metaphysics and epistemology, religion, aesthetics, politics and moral philosophy. Today we examine his moral philosophy.

2. Kant’s (1724-1804) main works on moral philosophy – which he called ‘practical philosophy’ – are Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason.

3. Kant rated the importance of morality about as highly as any philosopher has. Here is a famous statement from the concluding section of the Critique of Practical Reason:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and the more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. … the first view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital force (one knows not how) must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came. The second, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality…

Critique of Practical Reason 5:162

4. Two things are particularly worth noting here. First, the moral law is “within” us; it is not a law given by divine commandment or by social convention. It is a law which, in a sense that we need to understand, we legislate for ourselves. Second, morality gives us a dignity and importance beyond our animal existence. Morality is what enables human beings to transcend their animal natures.

5. Kant’s first great book on morality is Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. It was published in 1785. (You can find an excerpt from this work on the course website.)

6. Kant begins the Groundwork with a claim about value: the only thing that is unconditionally good, he claims, is a good will.

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore constitutes what is called character, is not good. … Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness.

Groundwork 4: 393

Having a good will is the mark of our character, i.e. of our being good people. Having a good will means having the right kind of intentions or motives. For Kant, therefore, it is inner psychological facts that are morally valuable; the consequences of our actions are not, by themselves, morally valuable. Kant’s theory of morality, therefore, is not consequentialist. Kant believed that a good will is a will that is motivated by moral principle, or duty. Because of his emphasis on acting from duty, Kant’s theory is usually classed as deontological.