The Categorical Imperative, Explained
It isn’t for nothing that Immanuel Kant is considered one of the most influential philosophers of all time.
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If the philosopher Kant comes up in a discussion, most likely someone will pick on his annoying writing style, namely excessive long and interlaced sentences (some sentences don’t fit on just one page). However, as a student currently completing his master’s in philosophy told me, “Kant isn’t famous because he wrote so intricately but despite it”.
The Prussian German philosopher Immanuel Kant lived during the Age of Enlightenment, from 1724–1804. His goal included finding the uppermost, unifying principle for morality, through reason. So it seems, Kant wasn’t the humblest person.
However, with his “Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals”, Kant didn’t want to introduce a new morality but explain a new formula that allows us to examine different already existing rules for acting well.
I want to give a short introduction into some reasoning of Immanuel Kant, why he propagates the good will and how he reaches the categorical imperative. Generally, Kant had the idea of always being able to act morally. Also, he thought of it as a principle applicable by everyone: That every person with reason is capable to act morally, following his rational principle, the categorical imperative.
I’ve split his text into small, digestible parts to break down his reasoning — to make it easier to evaluate it. We will now follow some of his reasoning, about the good will and how he concludes to the categorical imperative.
A good will is everything
Kant begins stating that a good will is the best, highest, most valuable thing, without actually defining what it means exactly. He plays with the reader’s preunderstanding.
The philosopher goes on and tells us that inner values can be good only in connection with the good will, but they are nothing without it. Character, fortune, talents, etc. are only good in connection with the good will. It seems even crueler if a person has got all these “gifts” from nature and is acting badly or selfishly. Then those otherwise good properties are reinforcing the bad mindset of the person.
Therefore, Kant concludes, a good will is always good. A good will is good just for the sake of existing.
His idea may seem disconcerting, and he’s even admitting that: So he proposes to examine it extensively.
Justification comes from nature
According to Kant, a living being is right the way it is. The way it is designed is fulfilling a specific purpose. We have to keep in mind that Kant lived in a time in Europe where people generally were more religious — so they believed the way God created the world and its inhabitants is due to a specific purpose.
And since we humans are equipped with reason which determines everything, our purpose can’t be to be happy, because reason does not provide happiness.
He argues that our instinct would make us happy, if we would (and could) follow it completely, it would allow us to take pleasure in nature. But we have reason, and reason makes us feel unsatisfied: Because our reason is questioning what would make us happy and wants to determine autonomously what happiness is and how one can receive it.
I think in some sense Kant is totally right: We tend to overthink stuff, which in turn ruins our mood or the whole situation we’re in, and the more we chase happiness the less it seems acquirable. But according to Kant, that’s how humans are wired — and it has a specific purpose, as we’ll see.
Misology: Hating our reason because it’s preventing our happiness
Kant tells us: The “more reason” we have, the more unsatisfied and unhappy we are. From this emerges the so-called misology, which means hate of reason. Hate and frustration lead us to envy those who are acting more instinctively.
Reason can’t generate happiness; But it’s producing something far more valuable: the good will
The keyword here is dignity. Kant says that our reason has a more dignified reason to exist than just pursuing happiness: And therefore, we have to neglect our private strive for happiness, and focus on the good will. Because reason is a great influence for the will, the real determination is to generate a good will.
Reason goes beyond happiness: It has its own purpose
The good will stands above all, it’s not the only good thing, but the most important. It can also restrict happiness, and that’s determined by nature. Because the good will is fulfilling its own purpose.
The good will is already there in every healthy reasonable human, so one doesn’t need to teach the good will. But it’s useful to enlighten people about it: For that, Kant introduces the term obligation, and again, without actually explaining what he means exactly with the term.
The obligation contains the good will
To explain that further, the philosopher focuses on different types of actions:
- Actions that are completed because they are compulsory (without propensities),
- actions performed just out of a propensity, so contrary to duty,
- and compulsory actions which can also be performed out of a propensity.
Note: With propensity, Kant doesn’t mean just a vague tendency to do something. He means all human interests, desires, wishes, goals we strive for, etc. But because he uses the term, I’ll do that too, just keep in mind he uses it in a broader sense.
Kant tells the readers that the first two types of actions are clear because one can easily say if an action is completed out of obligation or not. So he explains just the third type because it can be performed out of more reasons.
If an action is performed out of pure obligation, it is a morally right action.
Important: Kant differentiates between acting compulsory and out of obligation.
Examples for compulsory actions & out of propensity
Because it’s more difficult to distinguish the third type of actions that can be performed out of obligation and out of propensity, Kant gives us a few examples to better elaborate his thesis.
The honest grocer
It’s his obligation to sell his goods for the same price to anybody — but he doesn’t do it necessarily because out of obligation, but his own advantage requires it: It lets him appear as an honest seller, and this reputation, in turn, is beneficial for business.
To survive is an obligation
To obtain one’s life is an obligation, and it may be out of propensity. It doesn’t mean that people automatically are living their life out of obligation, but because of anxious diligence.
Only the person who’s unhappy, grumpy and without any desire to continue living, but still obtains their life (without propensity or anxiety), then it’s morally right, according to Kant.
Being charitable is an obligation
Or if one’s giving to the poor out of a propensity to look charitable, then that’s neither morally right nor out of obligation. But the one doing it without any propensity, just out of obligation, is acting morally right, according to Kant.
To be responsible for one’s own happiness
To secure its own happiness is an obligation, and the philosopher names a sophisticated reason:
If one doesn’t pursue his own happiness, he might end up so unsatisfied and depressed that he may give in to the temptation to perpetrate all obligations.
But also without looking at the obligation, it is clear that people already have the greatest propensity to assure their happiness. But the one who’s choosing happiness out of a sense of obligation, that’s the real moral value.
The principle of the will and his 2. proposition (don’t bother asking what’s the 1. proposition because Kant never mentions it)
The philosopher states that the moral value of an action lies explicitly in the maxim, out of which one acts. A maxim is a self-imposed rule of action.
Important is that it came to completing the action out of the principle of the will. Neither the intention (different propensities) plays a role in this moral matter, nor the consequences of the action.
According to Kant, the good will is a priori (“from the earlier”), which means unrelated to experience. The will is determined by its principle, so unrelated to everything material — the action must be done out of formal obligation.
Obligation emerges from respect for the law
An obligation is the necessity of action because it respects the law. Kant explains what that means exactly: We can only respect the law, not the consequences of an action, for them, we could only have a propensity. The consequences serve the propensity, so we can’t respect them. The obligation needs to evade the influence of the propensity.
The result is unimportant, the reasonable person who’s acting out of duty is already good, no matter the consequences of the action.
Two ways our good will can be determined
Kant also differentiates between two ways our will can be determined: Objectively, according to a universal law, or subjectively, according to my own maxim (but from which I can want that it becomes a universal law). And with knowing this, we’ve arrived at Kant’s central concept: The categorical imperative.
The categorical imperative
Like that, I take away every consequence my will could use as an impulse. What’s left is a general regularity, that is: I can always want that my maxim becomes a universal law. All reasonable people should agree on that.
Here’s the most known formulation of it (Kant formulated it in various ways):
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
An example that shows how we can act according to obligation vs. because of results
Kant presents the example of a person in a queue: Can the person lie and make a false promise to skip the queue?
The person may decide to not do it, because the person asks if that’s generally a good maxim and if they would want that everybody acts according to it, and concludes it isn’t good. Kant would say that’s morally right.
But if the person thinks about what the consequences of that action would be, and therefore decides to not do it, then Kant would say that that’s not morally valuable (although the result is the same: The person doesn’t lie)
It is a huge difference between acting according to obligation and out of worry about adverse consequences, Kant says.
In this case, I could tolerate a lie, but I can’t want a universal law for everybody allowed to lie in such a situation. So, I’m not going to. Kant thought it’s that simple.
A good will stands above everything else
The good will lets me act according to what my reason says it’s right. And the reason says something is right if I can want that it becomes a universal law. Therefore, the good will is highly valuable and stands above everything else (for example, my propensity).
This principle is universal, a person with reason following it will know in every situation what to do; And one doesn’t need any science or philosophy to be good, virtuous, honest and wise. That’s what Kant is promising and he seems highly confident about it.
A concrete example
You’ve now heard often enough that thing with “my maxim could also become a universal law”. But what does it mean in a concrete situation? Here’s an example:
Imagine it’s late at night, you were out and about and now you want to go home. You come to a bus/train/subway station and see the last train/bus running before closing time, departing in one minute. You have time to get on it, but not to buy a ticket (and you can’t buy a ticket on the train). So what do you do?
Getting on it and fare-dodge because you assume that late at night there’s no ticket inspector anyways, or buy a ticket but you won’t be able to catch the train and you’d need to wait a couple of hours until the next, first train in the morning runs. Or you can call a taxi or someone to collect you. What do you do?
According to Kant and the categorical imperative, it is evident:
- You first have to formulate your maxim, according to which you want to act. In this case, it’s: “I get on the train, although I don’t have a ticket but because it’s the last one and I’m sure that there’s no ticket inspector.”
- Now you reflect whether this maxim could be a universal law, which means that everybody would act according to it: Ask yourself if this could be a contradiction in conception (that means if the maxim would contradict itself if you imagine it as an universal law) or a contradiction in will (you can’t possibly want that it becomes an universal law).
In our example it’s a contradiction in conception because imagine if everyone would do it: All people would know that people are fare-dodging that late at night, so ticket inspectors would work at that time, too. Thus, it wouldn’t be possible to follow this universal law, therefore, it’s contradictory. So you can’t act according to your maxim but you need to do something else.
This student completing his master’s told me you can put it simply and say:
If you could do something because not everyone else is doing it, it is morally false, according to Kant.
So maybe just ask: “What if everyone?”
