Kant’s Formal Ethics vs. Material Ethics
Material ethics are those that focus on the “matter” or content of ethics, while formal ethics, like Kant’s, focus on the form.
Material Ethics
Material ethics focus on a specific end, such as happiness or pleasure. They determine the best actions and means to achieve these ends. This approach starts with a desired content and then seeks the means to access it.
- Empirical: They are based on experience.
- Hypothetical Precepts: Their rules are conditional and depend on specific interests.
- Heteronomous: Reason is not independent in creating its own laws; it depends on the conditions of experience.
Kant argued that these types of ethics are not truly moral, as they are governed by principles similar to those of the world of sensory experience.
Formal Ethics
Formal ethics focus on the form of moral law, not just the content. Kantian ethics is the primary example of formal ethics in the history of philosophy.
- A Priori Precepts: Their rules are independent of experience.
- Universally Valid: They apply to all individuals at all times.
- Categorical Precepts: They are absolute and unconditional.
- Autonomous: Reason itself dictates the precepts, independent of experience. Individuals should be guided solely by their Reason.
Freedom, Immortality of the Soul, and the Existence of God
Freedom
If freedom did not exist, everything would be governed by cause and effect. There could be no categorical imperatives; all imperatives would be hypothetical, and hypothetical imperatives cannot be the basis of morality.
Immortality of the Soul
In the phenomenal world, everything happens according to cause-and-effect relationships. However, moral freedom is necessary. If humans were only bodies, they would be subject to causality and could not be free. Morality would be meaningless. The immortality of the soul can be explained in two ways:
- Since the soul does not belong to the sensible world, it is not subject to time-space conditions and is, therefore, immortal and eternal.
- The soul strives to follow the moral ideal, but humans are also phenomenal beings living under the conditions of experience. Following the moral ideal can never be completely fulfilled; therefore, we need to believe in a world where this striving can be realized.
The Existence of God
Consider these two contradictory aspects of human nature:
- Humans have a soul that belongs to the noumenal world.
- Humans have a body and inhabit a physical world.
As part of the phenomenal world, humans tend towards happiness. As part of the noumenal world, humans tend towards compliance with the moral ideal. These two tendencies are contradictory. We need to believe in a harmonization of the intelligible (moral) world and the sensible world, that both worlds are somehow oriented towards the same end. This belief is realized by placing the world of ends under the guidance of an all-powerful God who harmonizes them. We need to believe in a God who grants happiness to those who comply with morality.
This harmony of morality and happiness is what Kant called the highest good.
Moral Claims
Freedom, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God are postulates. This means they are not demonstrable from empirical data, but they are the conditions for the existence of morality.
The objects of metaphysics, which had no meaning in science, make sense within the realm of practical reason, in morality. Metaphysics becomes meaningless as a science but acquires a foundation within practical reason.
These principles open the way for the justification of religious attitudes and the answer to the third question: What may I hope?