Kant and the Moral Law I: The Universal Law Formulation of the Categorical Imperative

1. Question: What are our moral duties, and where do they come from?

2. Kant's Answer: Our moral duties can all be derived from the Moral Law, which can be boiled down to a single Supreme Principle of Morality, expressed in terms of The Categorical Imperative. (Note that Kant thinks there are several equivalent formulations of the Categorical Imperative. We'll look at one today and another next time.)

But what does this mean, and where does the moral law come from? How is it to be applied in order to derive particular moral duties?

3. Some Important Background: Kantian Assumptions About What the Moral Law Would Have to Be Like

(A) It must be universal among rational agents. That is, it must apply to and be binding on all agents possessing the capacity of reason (including intelligent extraterrestrials, if there are any).

(B) Thus, morality can't be based on anything like distinctively human needs or desires or feelings or conditions of happiness.

(C) So what is morality or the moral law ultimately rooted in, as its source? What theories does this contrast with?

(D) What kind of law is the moral law, then? (What might you compare it to?) How does this guarantee its universal applicability to all rational agents?

(E) What kind of imperative is the moral law: a hypothetical imperative, or a categorical imperative? What is the difference between these?

BE SURE YOU CAN ANSWER C, D AND E BY THE END OF LECTURE.

4. The Moral Law consists in The Categorical Imperative, which may be formulated in various ways. Today we'll consider the first:

Categorical Imperative (CI), Formula of Universal Law (FUL):

• Act only in such a way that the maxim (i.e. principle or policy) implicit in your action is fit to be a universal law. (This leaves out part of what Kant had in mind, but it captures everything we're going to deal with.)
• A maxim is fit to be a universal law only if it is universalizable without 'self-destructing' or becoming ineffectual for its very purpose. (See below.)

What does Kant mean by a "maxim" or "subjective principle of action"? Basically just a principle expressing the 'policy' implicit in your planned behavior. Everything we do, at least when we act for a reason, has an implicit policy or "maxim" behind it, which we're acting out simply by doing what we're doing for the reason we have.

E.g. Suppose you're planning to make a lying promise in order to get some money you have no intention of repaying, because you need that money to satisfy some of your desires. In that case, the maxim you're implicitly adopting is:

M: "When I think myself in need of money, I will [out of self-interest] borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know that I never can do so."

Now Kant's CI may be thought of as a test for whether or not a given maxim is morally legitimate; and if a maxim is illegitimate, then the action based upon it is morally wrong.

• In order to be legitimate, a maxim must be capable of being universalized, or employed by everyone, without at the same time either leading to a contradiction or undermining the whole point of the action based on that maxim.

So you have to ask yourself: would this action I'm thinking about doing still make sense if everyone used the principle I'm using? Could I still go ahead and do this action for its original purpose, even if it were serving as a universal law employed by everyone? If so, then the action is fine; if not, it's wrong. (This is a bit of an oversimplification, but it will do for our limited purposes.)

Be sure you can explain how the CI test works in the case of the lying promise, and what this implies about at least one moral duty, according to Kant. (I won't worry about his other examples, which are much less clear.) How might the same argument be applied to an action such as cheating on water conservation rules?

5. Note that Kant is NOT saying that your making a lying promise is wrong because that would lead to bad social consequences, such as a breakdown of trust, etc. That would be closer to Mill's view, but has nothing at all to do with Kant, who does not look to the actual consequences of an action at all in determining whether it is right or wrong. BE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS POINT.

6. Next time we'll consider the second major formulation of the CI: The Formula of the End In Itself (also known as the Formula of Humanity), which Kant thinks is really equivalent to the first.