9. How can we work out what our duties are?

Duties are categorical imperatives. But not just anything in the form of a categorical imperative is a duty. Always insult people smaller than you has the form of a categorical imperative, but it isn’t a duty (I suppose). Kant calls rules that have the form of a categorical imperative “maxims”. A duty is a morally correct maxim. Now we need to know how to distinguish morally correct maxims from impostors like the insult smaller people maxim. What makes one maxim morally correct and another morally incorrect?

Kant’s general answer is that reason guides us. Morally correct maxims are reasonable and morally incorrect maxims are unreasonable. Morality is grounded in human reason. But how? He offers various formulas for deriving maxims from reason. I will discuss the two most important and well known of them. (Kant slips into calling these formulations of the categorical imperative. He then goes on to talk about the categorical imperative as if it is the form of all duties.)

Formula of Universal Law:

I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law. (Groundwork 4: 402)

Promise-breaking is an act that fails to satisfy the categorical imperative, understood in this way, because it is incoherent to imagine a universal practice of promise making and breaking. The widespread breaking of promises would undermine the very practice of promise making, says Kant, and thus it is incoherent to imagine both that everyone makes promises and break them at their convenience. If this is what we all did, there wouldn’t be any such thing as a promise. My saying “I promise to return your lawn-mower” wouldn’t mean anything anymore. Break promises at your convenience is a maxim that could not be universalised. Thus it is an unreasonable maxim. It can’t be a moral duty.

The formula of Humanity

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end. (Groundwork 4: 429)

Kant thinks that if you treat others as if they are not rational agents, with purposes and goals that they set for themselves, then you violate the categorical imperative. You have a duty to always treat others as an end in themselves. For example, the maxim always break promises when convenient gives you license to exploit others. In making a promise you know you will break as soon as it is convenient, you are exploiting the person you are promising. You are treating them merely as a means of securing what you want.

10. So Kant’s ethics is all about valuing reason, both in ourselves and in others. Why is reason so important? What is the value of our being reasonable in the way Kant demands? Kant’s answer is that in following reason, we gain a kind of freedom: autonomy. The good will – remember this is will that is motivated by knowledge of what is right, discovered by application of the categorical imperative – is a will that is free. Kant calls this an autonomous will. What does Kant mean? In the Groundwork, Kant contrasts autonomy with heteronomy.

Autonomy: the will’s determination of itself.

Heteronomy: the will’s determination by alien forces.

Autonomy is a kind of self-legislation. You are autonomous when you are your own ruler. Where do moral laws come from? According to Kant, from the reason within us. What happens when our decisions are forced upon us from outside? We lack autonomy; we become a conduit for outside forces, e.g. social pressures, peer pressure. What happens when our decisions are based on desires and feelings, inclinations as Kant calls them? We still lack autonomy, we become a conduit for the animal forces which bind us. Where did our desires (for pleasure, fame, sex, social standing, etc. etc.) come from? We did not choose them. On what basis could we choose them? Yet more desires? Eventually we must admit to just finding that we desire something. Nature, society, culture and chance all plant desires in us. How can we be autonomous – i.e. self-ruled, creators of our own character – if we merely respond to desires that are implanted in us? We can’t, thinks Kant. So how can we become autonomous? By following reason. By determining our will according to reason. By following the categorical imperative. In Kant’s fanciful way of putting it, by legislating the moral law for ourselves.

Kant’s vision is of people creating their own character by exercising their reason, rather than following the dictates of their inclinations. The value Kant places on autonomy is expressed vividly in this passage from his essay “What is Enlightenment?” (You can find this essay on the course website.)

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor! If I have a book which provides meaning for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who will judged my diet for me and so on, then I do not need to exert myself. I do not have any need to think; if I can pay, others will take over this tedious job for me. The guardians who have kindly undertaken the supervision will see to it that by far the largest part of mankind, including the entire “beautiful sex,” should consider the step into maturity, not only as difficult but as very dangerous. (Kant: What is Enlightenment?)