har Justice go Michael Sand now we turn to the hardest philosopher we're going to read in this course today we turn to Emanuel Kant who offers a different account of why we have a categorical duty to respect the Dignity of persons and not to use people as means merely even for good ends K excelled at the University of kingburg at the age of 16 at the age of 31 he got his first job as an unsalaried lecturer paid on commission based on the number of students who showed up at his lectures this is a sensible
system that Harvard would do well to [Applause] consider luckily for Kant he was a popular lecturer and also an industrious one and so he eak out a meager living it it wasn't until he was 57 that he published his first major work but it was worth the weight 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 the metaphysics of morals which we read in this course I want to acknowledge even before we start that Kant is a
difficult thinker but it's important to try to figure out what he's saying because what what this book is about is well it's about what the Supreme principle of morality is number one and it's also it gives us an account one of the most powerful accounts we have of what Freedom really is so let me start today K 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 doesn't stem from the idea that
we own ourselves 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're 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 course we seek 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 that makes us distinctive that makes us special that sets us apart from and above mere animal existence it makes us something more than just physical creatures with appetites now we often think of Freedom as simply consisting in doing what we want or in the ABS of obstacles to getting what we want that's one way of thinking about freedom but this isn't K's idea of freedom Kant has a more stringent demanding notion of what
it means to be free 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 seek after pleasure or the satisfaction of our desires or the avoidance of pain when we do that we aren't really acting freely why not we're really acting as the slaves of those appetites and impulses I didn't choose 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 the slogan was obey your thirst there there's a cent Insight buried in that Sprite advertising slogan that in a way is K's point when you go for sprite or Pepsi you're really 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 yourself haven't chosen or created and here it's worth noticing kant's specially demanding idea of freedom what way of acting how can my
will be determined if not by the promptings of nature or my Hunger or my appetite or my desires answer to act freely is to act autonomously and to act autonomously is to act according to a law that I give myself not according to the physical laws of nature or to the laws of cause and effect which include my desire to eat or to drink or to choose this food in a restaurant over that now what is the opposite 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 chosen for myself so Freedom as autonomy is the specially stringent idea that Kant insists on now why is autonomy the opposite of acting heteronomously or according to the dictates of nature Khan's point is that nature is governed by laws laws of cause and effect for example suppose 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 cause and effect the law of gravity and just as he has an unusual usually demanding and stringent conception of freedom freedom as autonomy he also has a a demanding conception of morality to act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end it's to choose the end itself for its own sake and that's something that human beings can do and that billiard balls can't and so far as we act on inclination or pursue pleasure we act as means to the realization of ends given outside us we
are instruments rather than authors of the purposes we pursue that's the heteronomous determination of the will the other hand in so far as we act autonomously according to a law we give ourselves we do something for its own sake as an end in itself when we act autonomously we cease to be instruments to purposes given outside us we become or we can come to think of ourselves as ends in ourselves this capacity to act freely can't tell 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 themselves and this is why it's wrong to use people for the sake of other people's 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 cases 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 way even if you shouldn't throw the Christians to the Lions because in the long run fear will spread the overall utility will decline the utilitarian would be upholding Justice and rights and respect for persons for the wrong reason for a purely contingent reason for an instrumental reason it would still be using people even where the calculus works out for the best in the long run it would still be using people as means rather then respecting them as ends in themselves so that's kind's idea of freedom as
autonomy and you can begin to see how it's connected to his idea of morality but we still have to answer one more question what gives an act its moral work in the first place if it can't be directed at 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 consist not in the consequences 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 because of what it affects or accomplishes K writes it's good in itself even if by its utmost effort The Good Will accomplishes nothing it would still shine like a jewel
for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself 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 confir moral worth on an action is the motive of Duty well what's the opposite of doing something out of a sense of Duty because it's right well for Kant the opposite would be
all of those motives having to do with our inclinations and inclinations refer to all of our desires all of our contingently given wants preferences impulses and alike only actions done for the sake of the mor law for the sake of Duty only these actions have moral worth now I want to see 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
because it's right he says suppose there's a shopkeeper and an inexperienced customer comes in the shopkeeper knows that he could give the customer the wrong change could Short change the customer and get away with it that at least that customer wouldn't know but the shopkeeper nonetheless says well if I short change this customer word may get out my reputation would be damaged and I would lose business so I won't show Short change 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 because the shopkeeper only did the right thing for the wrong reason out of self-interest that's a pretty straightforward case then takes another case the case of suicide he says we have a duty to preserve ourselves 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 to imagine someone who's miserable and who despite having an absolutely miserable life nonetheless
recognizes the duty to preserve oneself and so does not commit suicide that's 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 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 is as important as any other asset
because a business that deals in truth openness and fair value cannot help but do well come join us and profit from it what would K 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 these companies deal honestly with their customers their action lacks moral worth this is kant's point or 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 10 to 25% at local shops well what would you think of someone motivated to uphold an honor code with the hope of discounts it's the same as K shopkeeper the point is what matters is the quality of the will the character of the motive and the relevant 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 self-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 con idea of freedom and of morality now I want to pause here to see if all of this is clear or if you have some questions or puzzles they can be questions of clarification or or they can be challenges if you want to challenge this idea that only the motive of Duty confers moral worth on the action what do you
think yes yeah I actually have uh two questions of clarification um the the first is there seems to be an aspect of this that makes it sort of uh self-defeating and that once you're conscious of um what morality is you can sort of alter your motive to achieve that end of of morality and second give me give me an example of what you have in mind uh the shop keeper example if he decides that he wants to give the person the money um to do the right thing and he and he decides that's his motive
to do so um because he wants to be moral then isn't that sort of defeating trying to um isn't that sort of defeating the purity of his action if it if if morality is determined by his motive his motive is his motive is then to act so you're imagining a case not of the purely selfish calculating shopkeeper but of one who says well he may consider short changing the customer but then he says not well my reputation might suffer if word gets out but instead he says actually I would like to be the kind of
honest person who gives the right change to customers simply because it's the right thing to do or simply because I want to be moral because I want to be moral I want to be a good person and so I'm going to conform all of my actions to what morality requires it's a subtle point it's a good question Kant does acknowledge you're pressing Kant on an important Point here Kant does say there has to be some incentive to obey the moral law it can't be a self-interested incentive that would defeat it by definition so he speaks
of a different kind of incentive from an inclination he speaks of reverence for the moral law so if that shopkeeper says I want to develop a reverence for the moral law and so I'm going to act and so I'm going to do the right thing then I think he's there he's there as far as kant's concerned because he's formed his motive his will is conforming to the moral law once he sees the importance of it so it would count it would count all right and then secondly very quickly um what stops morality from becoming completely
objective in this point what stops morality from becoming completely subjective yeah like how can if there's if morality is if morality is completely determined by your morals then how can you apply this or how can it be that's also a great question what's your name my name is Amad amadi yeah all right if acting morally means acting according to a moral law out of Duty and if it's also to act freely in the sense of autonomously it must mean that I'm acting according to a law that I give myself that's what it means to act
autonomously amadia is right about that but that does raise a really interesting question if acting autonomously means acting according to a law I give myself that's how I escape the chain of cause and effect in the laws of nature what's to guarantee that the law I give myself when I'm acting out of Duty is the same as the law that Amar is giving himself and that each of you gives yourselves well here's the question how many how many moral laws from cons point of view are there in this room are there a thousand or is
there one he thinks there's one which in a way does go back to this question all right what is the moral law what does it tell us so what guarantees it sounds like it to act autonomously is to act according to one's conscience according to a law one gives oneself but what guarantees that we if we all exercise our reason we will come up with one and the same moral law that's what aad wants to know here's K's answer the reason that leads us to the law we give ourselves as autonomous beings is a reason
it's a kind of practical reason that we share as human beings it's not idiosyncratic the reason we need to respect the Dignity of persons is that we're all rational beings we all have the capacity for reason and it's the exercise of that capacity for reason which exists undifferentiated in all of us that makes us worthy of dignity all of us and since it's the same capacity for reason unqualified by particular autobiographies and life circumstances it's the same Universal capacity for reason that delivers the moral law it turns out that to act autonomously is to act
according to a law we give ourselves exercising our reason but it's the reason we share with everyone as rational beings not the particular reasons we have given our upbringings our particular values our particular interests it's pure practical reason in K's terms which legislates opior regardless of any particular contingent or empirical ends well what moral law would that kind of Reason deliver what is its content to answer that question you have to read the groundwork and we'll continue with that question next time for K morally speaking suicide is on a par with murder It's On a
par with murder because what we violate when we take a life when we take someone's life ours or somebody else's we use that person we use a rational being we use Humanity as a means and so we fail to respect Humanity as an end [Music] [Music]
