Kant’s Moral Philosophy: Categorical Imperative and Practical Reason
The Practical Reason: Moral Freedom and Autonomy
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason demonstrates that scientific knowledge is impossible beyond the limits of experience. When reason exceeds those limits, it falls into contradictions. Nevertheless, the main concepts of metaphysics (God, soul, world), although exceeding the limits of sense experience, are an ideal of reason. Reason aspires to summarize knowledge.
Human reason is beset by issues that it cannot escape, as the author tells us, but that it cannot answer. The desirable is not attainable. We should follow the path of the Critique of Practical Reason.
Critique of Material Ethics: The Hypothetical Imperative
Ethics is exclusively a human matter. We must distinguish between material ethics and formal ethics. Materialistic ethics is not based on spiritual reality, and it does not preclude spiritual ethics.
Material ethics is one in which the rightness or wrongness of conduct depends on something considered a supreme good for human beings. This supreme good can be identified with pleasure, happiness, God, etc. Material ethics has the following characteristics:
- They are based on means to an end.
- They have content and ethical standards.
- They are empirical because their standards and contents are based on experience. In Epicurean ethics, we see that as children, we seek pleasure and avoid pain.
- They are hypothetical because their standards are hypothetical or conditional.
- They are heteronomous because their standards come from outside of reason, outside of the subject.
Formal Morality: The Categorical Imperative
The starting point of Kantian morality is the finding that the subject is aware of its moral obligation. This must originate in reason.
Kant’s formal ethics sets out how we should behave, what is good, and what is bad. Characteristics of this ethic:
- It is empty of content; that is, it sets no end nor means.
- It is non-empirical; that is, a priori. Its rules are universal and necessary for all human beings.
- It is autonomous; that is, the subject gives themselves a standard without being required by virtue of something outside of reason itself.
- It is categorical; its judgments are absolute and without condition.
- It is based on duty. It tells us how we should do things. The moral standard is the duty of pure respect for duty.
Formulations of the Categorical Imperative
“Act so that the maxim of your will can always hold at the same time as a principle of universal legislation.” Example: Take care of your father and mother.
Maxims and Rules (Laws): The Imperatives
Maxims are subjective principles, considered valid only for the subject’s will that formulates them. Laws are objective standards or principles that are considered valid for the will of all rational beings.
The maxim expresses a personal desire; the law expresses a duty.
Kant distinguishes two kinds of imperatives:
- Hypothetical imperatives are all about material ethics and are made conditionally. These do not have universal value.
- Categorical imperatives are those in which the action has no end. They are formulated with absolute judgments or standards, without any conditions, and have a universal value. Categorical imperatives are moral laws of formal ethics because they show us how we should act.
The Postulates of Practical Reason
The freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God are the tenets of Practical Reason.
The existence of freedom is given by the existence of moral law. It is a condition of moral autonomy. Without freedom, there is no morality. To act morally in accordance with duty is only possible if there is freedom to overcome inclinations, desires, and constraints. The world is the place where freedom is exercised.
The immortality of the soul flows from the requirement of realizing the highest good by the will. This, in moral action, pursues holiness that cannot be achieved in this life and thus needs a lasting existence that is only possible with immortality.
The immortality of the soul is best understood if we consider that reason commands us to achieve virtue, the greatest honor possible, to the ability of our will to moral law. Its scope requires an unlimited duration.
The existence of God: The union of virtue and happiness is the highest good for humans. Virtue is the adequacy of my action to duty. The existence of God is assumed to guarantee the link between virtue and happiness. The virtuous person renounces happiness but is worthy of it, and God guarantees it. In this world, you cannot fully achieve happiness. God is an ideal of perfection to which man intends to resemble. God is the ideal for human action. Human beings can only achieve happiness and the highest good if God exists.