Justice 06 Mind Your Motive / The Supreme Principl e of Morality Now we turn Now we turn to the hardest philosopher we're going to read in this cour. Today we turn to Immanuel Kant who offers a different account of why we have a categorical duty to respect the dignity of persons and not to u people as means merely even for good ends.
Kant excelled at the University of Konigsberg at the age of 16.
At age of 31, he got his first job as an unsalaried lecturer paid on commission bad on the number of students who showed up at his lectures.
This is a nsible system that Harvard would do well to consider.
Luckily for Kant, he was a popular lecturer and also an industrious one and so he eked out a meager living.
It wasn't until he was 57 that he published his first major work.
But, it was worth the wait, the book was the "Critique of Pure Reason" perhaps the most important work in all of modern philosophy.
And a few years later, Kant wrote the groundwork for "Metaphysics of Morals" which we read in this cour.
I want to acknowledge even before we start that Kant is a difficult thinker but it's important to try to figure what he's saying becau what this book is about is what the supreme principle of morality is, number one, and it also gives us an account ®C one of the most powerful accounts we have ®C of what freedom really is.
So, let me start today, Kant rejects utilitarianism.
He thinks that the individual person, all human beings, have a certain dignity that commands our respect.
The reason the individual is sacred or the bearer of rights, according to Kant, doesn't stem from the idea that we own ourlves but instead from the idea that we are all rational beings. We're all rational beings, which simply means that we are beings who are capable of reason. We are also autonomous beings, which is to say that we are beings capable of acting and choosing freely.
Now, this capacity for reason and freedom isn't the only capacity we have.
We also have the capacity for pain and pleasure, for suffering and satisfaction.
Kant admits the utilitarians were half right.
Of cour, we ek to avoid pain and we like pleasure, Kant doesn't deny this.
What he does deny is Bentham's claim that pain and pleasure are our sovereign masters. He thinks that's wrong.
Kant thinks that it's our rational capacity that makes us distinctive, that makes us special, that ts us apart from and above mere animal existence.
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It makes us something more than just physical creatures with appetites.
We often think of freedom as simply consisting in doing what we want or in the abnce of obstacles to getting what we want, that's one way of thinking about freedom.
But this isn't Kant's idea of freedom.
Kant has a more stringent demanding notion of what it means to be free.广东清补凉
And though it's stringent and demanding, if you think it through, it's actually pretty persuasive.
Kant reasons as follows: when we, like animals, ek after pleasure or the satisfaction of our desires or the avoidance of pain, when we do that we aren't really acting freely.
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Why not?
We're really acting as the slaves of tho appetites and impuls.
I didn't choo this particular hunger or that particular appetite and so when I act to satisfy it, I'm just acting according to natural necessity.
And for Kant, freedom is the opposite of necessity.
There was an advertising slogan for the soft drink Sprite a few years ago.月代头布丁
The slogan was, "Obey your thirst." There's a Kantian insight buried in that Sprite advertising slogan that in a way is Kant's point.
When you go for Sprite or Pepsi, you're really ®C you might think that you're choosing freely, Sprite
versus Pepsi, but you're actually obeying something, a thirst or maybe a desire manufactured or massaged by advertising, you're obeying a prompting that you yourlf haven't chon or created.
And here it is worth noticing Kant's specially demanding idea of freedom.
What way of acting ®C how can my will be determined if not by the promptings of nature or my hunger or my appetite or my desires?
Kant's answer?
To act freely is to act autonomously, and to act autonomously is to act according to a law that I give mylf not according to the physical laws of nature or the laws of cau and effect which include my desire to eat or to drink or to choo this food in a restaurant over that. Now, what is the opposite of autonomy for Kant?
He invents a special term to describe the opposite of autonomy.
Heteronomy is the opposite of autonomy.
When I act heteronomously, I'm acting according to an inclination, or a desire, that I haven't chon for mylf.
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So, freedom as autonomy is an especially stringent idea that Kant insists on.
nature?
Kant's point is that nature is governed by laws, laws of cau and effect for example.
Suppo you drop a billiard ball, it falls to the ground; we wouldn't say the billiard ball is acting freely.
Why not?
It's acting according to the law of nature, according to the laws of cau of effect, the law of gravity.
And just as he has an unusually demanding and stringent conception of freedom, freedom as autonomy, he also has a demanding conception of morality.
To act freely is not to choo the best means to a given end; it's to choo the end itlf for its own sake.
And that's something that human beings can do and that billiard balls can't.
In so far as we act on inclination or pursue pleasure, we act as means to the realization of ends give
n outside us.
We are instruments rather than authors of the purpos we pursue, that's the heteronymous determination of the will.什么是三方协议
On the other hand, in so far as we act autonomously, according to a law we give ourlves, we do something for its own sake as an end in itlf.
When we act autonomously, we ize to be instruments to purpos given outside us, we become, or we can come to think of ourlves as ends in ourlves.
This capacity to act freely, Kant tells us, is what gives human life its special dignity.
Respecting human dignity means regarding persons not just as means but also as ends in themlves.
And this is why it's wrong to u people for the sake of other peoples' well-being or happiness.
This is the real reason, Kant says, that utilitarianism goes wrong.
This is the reason it's important to respect the dignity of persons and to uphold their rights.
So, even if there are cas, remember John Stewart Mill said, "Well, in the long run, if we uphold justice and respect the dignity of persons, we will maximize human happiness." What would Kant's answer be to that?
What would his answer be?
Even if that were true, even if the calculus worked out that way, even if you shouldn't throw the Christian's to the lions becau in the long run fear will spread, the overall utility will decline.
The utilitarian would be upholding justice and right and respect for persons for the wrong reason, for a purely a contingent reason, for an instrumental reason.
it would still be using people as means rather than respecting them as ends in themlves.
So, that's Kant's idea of freedom as autonomy and you can begin to e how it's connected to his idea of morality.
But we still have to answer one more question, what gives an act its moral worth in the first place?
If it can't be directed, that utility or satisfying wants and desires, what gives an action its moral worth?
This leads us from Kant's demanding idea of freedom to his demanding idea of morality.
What does Kant say?
What makes an action morally worthy consists not in the conquences or in the results that flow from it, what makes an action morally worthy has to do with the motive, with the quality of the will, with the intention for which the act is done.
What matters is the motive and the motive must be of a certain kind.
So, the moral worth of an action depends on the motive for which it's done and the important thing is that the person do the right thing for the right reason."A good will isn't good becau of what it affects or accomplishes," Kant writes, "it's good in itlf.
Even if by its utmost effort, the goodwill accomplishes nothing, it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itlf." And so, for any action to be morally good, it's not enough that it should conform to the moral law, it must also be done for the sake of the moral law.
The idea is that the motive confers the moral worth on an action and the only kind of motive that can
confer moral worth on an action is the motive of duty.
Well, what's the opposite of doing something out of a n of duty becau it's right?
Well for Kant, the opposite would be all of tho motives having to do with our inclinations.
And inclinations refer to all of our desires, all of our contingently given wants, preferences, impuls, and the like.
Only actions done for the sake of the moral law, for the sake of duty, only the actions have moral worth.
Now, I want to e what you think about this idea but first let's consider a few examples.
Kant begins with an example of a shopkeeper.
He wants to bring out the intuition and make plausible the idea that what confers moral worth on an action is that it be done becau it's right.
He says suppo there's a shopkeeper and an inexperienced customer comes in.
The shopkeeper knows that he could give the customer the wrong change, could shortchange the customer and get away with it; at least that customer wouldn't know.
But the shopkeeper nonetheless says, "Well, if I shortchange this customer, word may get
out, my reputation would be damaged, and I would lo business, so I won't shortchange this customer." The shopkeeper does nothing wrong, he gives the correct change, but does his action have moral worth?
Kant says no, it doesn't have moral worth becau the shopkeeper only did the right thing for the wrong reason, out of lf-interest.
That's a pretty straightforward ca.
Then he takes another ca, the ca of suicide.
He says we have a duty to prerve ourlves.
Now, for most people who love life, we have multiple reasons for not taking our own lives.
So, the only way we can really tell, the only way we can isolate the operative motive for someone who doesn't take his or her life is to think ®C to imagine someone who's mirable and who despite having an absolutely mirable life nonetheless recognizes the duty to prerve one's lf and so does not commit suicide.
The force of the example is to bring out the motive that matters and the motive that matters for morality is doing the right thing for the sake of duty.
Let me just give you a couple of other examples.
The Better Business Bureau, what's their slogan?
The slogan of the Better Business Bureau: "Honesty is the best policy.
It's also the most profitable." This is the Better Business Bureau's full page ad in the New York Times, "Honesty, it's as important as any other ast becau a business that deals in truth, openness, and fair value cannot help but do well.
Come join us and profit from it." What would Kant say about the moral worth of the honest dealings of members of the Better Business Bureau?
What would he say?
That here's a perfect example that if this is the reason that the companies deal honestly with their customers, their action lacks moral worth, this is Kant's point.
A couple of years ago, at the University of Maryland, there was a problem with cheating and so they initiated an honor system and they created a program with local merchants that if you signed the honor pledge, a pledge not to cheat, you would get discounts of 276 Well what would you think of someone motivated to uphold an honor code with the hope of discounts?
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It's the same as Kant's shopkeeper.
The point is, what matters is the quality of the will, the character of the motive and the relative motive to morality can only be the motive of duty, not the motive of inclination.
And when I act out of duty, when I resist as my motive for acting inclinations or lf-interest, even sympathy and altruism, only then am I acting freely, only then am I acting autonomously, only then is my will not determined or governed by external considerations, that's the link between Kant's idea of freedom and of morality.
通项
Now, I want to pau here to e if all of this is clear or if you have some questions or
