The Kantegorical Imperative: The Moral Hypocrisy of Kant’s “Groundwork”
Like all insolent children, I questioned everything my parents told me to do, and, like most children, I always received the same response:
“Matt could you please clean your room?”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
My own feelings about the cleanliness of my room were unimportant, nor were any present actions, pursuits, or projects at the time. The command, as one that came from my parents, left no room for inaction or disobedience. One might even say that obedience was made necessary by the command’s own nature. Insolent as I was, even young me understood that in these cases I was little more than a means for the fulfillment of my parents’ commands. I washed dishes, cooked dinner, and cleaned my room, all without motivation beyond my understanding of duty to my parent’s commands.[1] Though I could not have known it at the time, my dutiful obedience of my parent’s wishes was actually quite representative of one of the great philosophical debates.[2] That debate is over the function of morality — whether or not it’s possible to balance a moral system that commands complete obedience with respecting the autonomy and value of individual people. In this paper I will argue that it’s not possible to balance these two ideas, that the categorical imperative of morality, at least by Kant’s understanding, doesn’t work. The Universal Law Formulation, central to the Categorical Imperative, is incompatible with Kant’s humanity formulation. In fact, Kantian morality actually dehumanizes the people involved in, and surrounding moral decisions because of the nature of the imperative.
Immanuel Kant is not only one of the most famous philosophers to write on the subject of morality as a categorical imperative, but also one of the most famous philosophers. Kant is famous (or infamous, depending on which group of ethics scholars you talk to) for taking an extremely hardline and unforgiving view on morality. The most well-known of Kant’s views on this subject are chronicled within his Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals, in which he explores how the structure he sees in morality makes it a categorical imperative — a command that must be obeyed simply because of what that command is.
At the beginning of his work, Kant enters an age-old debate amongst philosophers of ethics and morality; he seeks to offer a definition of something that is intrinsically good, that is, good in and of itself. This search is important to philosophers, especially those who study morality, because anything good in and of itself seems to be a reference point for life — it offers something to aim at, to pursue. There’s an obvious connection between intrinsic good and morality; most people understand morality to be, at its most basic level, the pursuit of the good. Intrinsic good, as the purest good, would stand to be certainly related to the pursuit of morality, if not the target of it.
Kant believed there was only one thing in the human world that was good in and of itself: the good will. At the beginning of Groundwork, Kant offers two hypotheses for what makes a good will good. The first is that a will is good in so far as it aims at the right things, states of affairs, character traits, actions, or really anything. To put it simpler, a will is good if it pursues the good stuff. However, Kant quickly rejects this hypothesis. The problem, he demonstrates, is that these things are only conditionally good. That is, their goodness is entirely dependent upon the person possessing them. Take, for instance, the force from Star Wars. It is, seemingly, a pretty good thing to pursue, as it gives its wielder awesome powers and the potential to make great change. But in actuality, the force is only considered good when it is wielded by the Jedi, the good guys. When it is used by the Sith, the bad guys, often to do something like shoot lightning at people or choke them for information, it is very much bad.[3]Kant then presents a second hypothesis; a good will is made good “only through its willing, i.e. it is good in itself,” (319). What Kant wants us to take away is that the pursuits or consequences of a will are unimportant. He believes the success or failure of a will at bringing about happiness, the traditional understanding of what makes it good, really has more to do with luck than anything else. Luck, Kant believes, cannot be the sole determining factor of a will’s goodness. Therefore, a will must be made good by something internal, without regard for consequences, successes, or failures. In other words, a good will must be good in and of itself.
This raises a slight speedbump for Kant — he must find a way to demonstrate how a will can be intrinsic, how it’s good comes internally. He believes that since neither the happiness produced by a will nor any other consequences of its actions can determine the goodness of that will, then the will’s good must come from something beyond its actions. Kant believes this greater element to bring goodness is the motivation behind actions. According to Kant, people act because of two types of motivation: inclination or duty. Acting from inclination involves acting for any reason other than simple recognition of duty, such as acting out of love, self-interest, the desire for adrenaline, addiction, or countless other motivating factors. When one acts from duty, they act solely out of respect for the moral law (as the moral law is the only law, we have a duty too). So, a will’s good and moral worth comes from its internal motivation for obeying its moral duties. Kant presents the example of a shopkeeper who notices an inexperienced shopper. The shopkeeper knows he could overcharge the shopper and take more money if he wanted to, but he decides not to. There are three reasons for the shopkeeper to have chosen not to cheat the shopper out his money: (A.) cheating the shopper could hurt the store’s reputation, (B.) the shopkeeper chose not to cheat the shopper out of his love for other people, and (C.) the shopkeeper acts according to the commands of morality for the reason that duty requires it. Despite the fact that in each of these scenarios the shopkeeper acts according the commands of morality, in only scenario C is the shopkeeper actually moral, as it was the only scenario in which his motivations were pure.
Now that Kant has built the foundation of his moral system, a good will, he now must move onto showing what moral actions would actually look like. Most philosophers who delve into explorations of a moral law utilize the experiences caused by certain actions to find morality. For instance, utilitarianism, another popular moral system, relies on the net happiness caused by an action to judge their morality. However, Kant raises the point that experience can’t be the necessary condition for morality. The experiences caused by moral actions are almost entirely dependent on the circumstances that surround them. These experiences then fail to demonstrate whether or not an actor was simply acting according to the moral law for his own motivations, rather than out of duty to the moral law. Since we can’t use experience to craft moral laws, Kant believes they must come from somewhere else. For Kant, the commands of morality must be a priori, or self-evident. Since the moral laws must be self-evident, that is coming from within themselves, Kant reasons that they must be a categorical imperative, rather than hypothetical. A categorical imperative is a command that is necessary, that demands obedience by its very nature. As Kant describes it, it’s an action that “represents an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to another end” (327). Hypothetical imperatives, on the other hand, are those that should be obeyed because of some outside motivating factor — such as one caring about following a certain imperative.
Kant writes that morality’s imperative has two parts. The first is an answer to the question, ‘what is my moral duty?’ Kant’s answer is clear: “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law,” (321–322). Kant believes that without this piece, the Universal Law Formulation, society itself could simply collapse, as people provided exceptions to the laws of morality that then became the norm (his example is lying becomes okay and then no one knows what the truth is). The second pillar of Kant’s categorical imperative stems more form his belief in the importance of individual rights and dignity. As he tells it, we should “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in any other person, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” (334). This second part is what I’ll call the humanity formulation, since it seems to center around always respecting the humanity in people.
In summary, Kant paints a narrow picture of morality. It is process-driven with a focus on motivation rather than results, but with a built-in respect for other people and oneself. The question is, can morality actually function as a categorical imperative under Kant’s understanding while maintaining some semblance of personal autonomy? In short, no. Despite the popularity of Kantian morality, it seems as though in practice it should fail at meeting the second aspect of the categorical imperative. Due to the structure of the categorical imperative, it seems impossible to never treat yourself or others as a mere means. Kantian morality is, in a word, hypocritical.
Kant writes that we should never view ourselves as a mere means, but as an end in ourselves. Yet it seems as though that’s exactly what Kantian morality calls us to see ourselves as. Due to the reason-driven nature of morality, whereby all that matters is our ability to rationally determine the commands of morality and obey those duties, we ourselves our simply rendered a mere means for the fulfilment of the moral law. Take the following example. Person one lives in Country A. Country A is extremely wealthy, with a robust military. Country B, on the other hand is poor and experiencing a civil war between a collapsed government and a genocidal warlord, and the warlord is winning. The leaders of Country A decide that the appropriate course of action is to send their military to stop the genocide in Country B, either out of accordance with various UN treaties, international norms, or the commands of morality. Person 1 understands that a significant moral transgression is occurring in Country B (the genocide) and must decide whether or not he should enlist and fight against the genocide. He ultimately decides to enlist, believing that it is his moral duty to go fight against the evils of genocide.
From a Kantian perspective, this seems not only fine, but ideal. Person one understood that nothing was more important than his duty to morality, interpreted that duty, and then went off to war, possibly to die. Despite this Kantian success, something feels inherently wrong about this process. The problem, I think, lies in the fact that Person one didn’t do any soul searching beyond simply recognizing the commands of morality. In doing so, he was treating himself as little more than a vessel for morality, nothing more than a means to the end of morality. The objection here is clear; since I designed the scenario, I chose not to have Person one perform any further reflection for my own rhetorical purpose. While technically true, I don’t think the addition of further thinking would have changed the situation, or the problem at all. In fact, I think it would only highlight the issue more. Let’s say Person One also has a long internal dialogue about the risks to his own persona health, the effect his will have on his family, and the fact that he’ll have to leave a good job — then still decides to enlist. Yes, Person one experienced a more complex personal reflection, but it was inconsequential. He still elected that nothing was more important than duty’s command, and that he himself was little more than a means for the fulfillment of morality.
At this point I think there’s a fair objection to my writing. The purpose of morality is generally understood to be putting some greater good above oneself, acting selflessly. I think this could be a valid objection — maybe it is okay that morality’s categorical imperative calls us to see ourselves to see ourselves as simply vessels for some greater good. Maybe the world would be a better place if everyone did that. Susan Wolf would argue that this is ridiculous, as the life of a moral saint (someone who completely devotes their life to the cause of morality) is inherently not worth living. I think both sides of this argument have good points, and it’s an important conversation to have: whether or not a life of moral devotion should actually be the life we pursue. Though I tend to agree with Wolf, I don’t want to take up her banner here because I think there’s a more important fundamental flaw to Kant’s vision of morality as a categorical imperative. The moral system Kant illustrates not only treats us, and asks us to treat ourselves, as nothing more than means to morality’s end, it also calls upon us to see each other that way.
Similar to the first issue, this one arises out of the Universal Law Formulation. We are commanded by our moral duty to ignore the specific or complicating circumstances of a situation and follow the moral law. The chance of potential harm to other people seems to be, at least by my assessment of the categorical imperative, unimportant. Take America’s most classic moral dilemma; a man’s girlfriend asks him if a new outfit makes her look fat, and he thinks it might (strictly due to the cut of the fabric), how should he respond?[4]Different forms of morality may have different answers here depending on how much they prioritize the happiness of the girlfriend, but Kant’s moral system is pretty clear. As Kant makes abundantly clear in Groundwork, it is not okay to lie. Imagine then the man, a dutiful Kantian, recognizing his moral duty not to lie, and telling his girlfriend he thinks she looks bad.
The consequences of this choice probably wouldn’t be that bad. There might be a fight, maybe some tears, hopefully some personal examination, and then things would move on. Though, I don’t actually think any of that presents a real problem. The girlfriend will obviously be hurt by her boyfriend’s comment, but it’s not the hurt that I think is the problem, it’s the way Kantian morality sees the girlfriend and her hurt that gives me pause. It is not just that they are inconsequential, it is that they are not even part of the equation. In essence, the girlfriend becomes little more than a means for the fulfillment of duty’s command on the part of her boyfriend. Or, imagine a more extreme example: Anne Frank. Imagine on the day when the Nazis came to knock on the door of the safe house, and they asked the homeowners if they were hiding any Jewish fugitives. It again seems like based on a Kantian interpretation of the moral law, they would have to answer yes and turn over the people hiding in their attic. Eight lives would have been forfeited, entirely as a means to the fulfillment of the moral law.[5]Essentially, it seems as though the proper practice of Kantian morality involves ignoring Kant’s humanity formulation in favor of obedience to the moral law.
I think there’s a good objection to be had here. Though I’ve tried my best to keep my focus on the process of Kantian morality and how it reduces people to mere means, my evidence for this has been the lack of importance placed by this moral system on the consequences of certain actions. A Kantian here would argue that it seems like I’m arguing that moral luck should somehow count towards morality, that the circumstances which force moral decisions to happen should affect what morality commands of each actor. That, they would argue, is ridiculous. De-universalizing morality like that is a slipper slope that nets you even more situations where what should be immoral actions are somehow denoted as the moral ones. I think my only real response here would be to dodge the question.
The goal of this paper was not to craft a new moral system, nor argue for the abandonment of Kantian ethics. Though as somewhat of a moral determinist I might one day find myself on that side of the argument, that’s not what I set out to do. Instead, I wanted to illustrate how it seems like Kant’s Moral System is dehumanizing. Due to the fact that morality becomes the sole focus of any decision-making, it reduces humans to mere means to the end of moral fulfillment, something which Kant would have considered immoral. While I think there are certainly times when Kantian morality works, and though devising an alternative moral system is both beyond the scope of this paper and above my paygrade, I think this tendency to dehumanize resents a flaw in the Kantian system, both in theory and in practice. Purely theoretically, it seems as though these two parts of Kant’s morality are incompatible with each other — resulting in a practice of ignoring the humanity formulation, as I’ve previously explored. A system for human morality has to have a built-in understanding of what it means to be human, and it seems a though Kant’s system ignores that understanding. Looking back on my first example, it’s not impossible to picture the man just signing up for war because of he recognizes that is duty’s command. Yet it feels intuitively wrong — it feels like he should be having a more significant conversation with himself, not because his decision is wrong, but because he’s human.
[1]I’ll admit, there was also the threat of timeout or, God forbid, the confiscation of my Lego collection, to serve as an effective source of motivation. However, that felt less salient to the parallel I was trying to draw here, so I left it out for rhetorical purposes.
[2]As disappointing as it is, I didn’t read much philosophy growing up. Though I could quote The Lord of the Rings from cover to cover, I didn’t know a single thing about Kant or Mill.
[3]The actual moral situations of Star Wars are far more complex than this. The Jedi, portrayed in the story as the good guys, are actually essentially just an all-powerful religious cult that enforces its own law and order independently of the democratically elected Galactic Senate. So, the political and moral ramifications there are quite interesting. Though, I guess that’s neither here nor there.
[4]I was tempted here to not use a man and a girlfriend, in the sake of feminism and progress. But ultimately went with the more classic case, despite the sexism embedded within it, due to its cultural significance. A scene similar to this can be found in classic American books, tv shows, movies, and even jokes.
[5]I know that both of these examples relied on Kant’s hardline take on lying, and while I dislike it, my dislike is not the sole reason I chose both of these cases. I think lying is a simple action that a lot of people are maybe too comfortable with, so it made the examples more hard-hitting, and I think the lying rule is certainly representative of everything else.
[This article is adapted from a paper written over the course of the author’s bachelor studies. For the full paper, please send a message.]
