no producing WGBH Boston asociado Harvard University Wow a quasar certifies e-justice from Michael Sandel today we turn back to Kahn before we do remember this is the week by the end of which all of you will basically get can't figure out what he's up to you're laughing no it will happen Kant's groundwork is about two big questions first what is the supreme principle of morality second how is freedom possible two big questions now one way of making your way through this dense philosophical book is to bear in mind a set of opposition's or contrasts or
dualisms that are related today I'd like to talk about them today we're going to answer the question what according to Kant is the supreme principle of morality and in answering that question in working our way up to con censor to that question it will help to bear in mind three contrasts or dualisms that con sets out the first you remember had to do with the motive according to which we act and according to Kant only one kind of motive is consistent with morality the motive of Duty doing the right thing for the right reason what
other kind of motives are there Kant sums them up in the category of inclination every time the motive for what we do is to satisfy a desire or a preference that we may have to pursue some interest we're acting out of inclination now let me pause to see if in thinking about the question of the motive of duty the good will see if any of you has a question about that notch of Kant's claim or is everybody happy with this distinction what do you think go ahead when you make that distinction between duty and inclination
is there ever any moral action ever I mean you could always kind of probably find some selfish selfish motive can't you maybe very often people do have self-interested motives when they act Khan wouldn't dispute that but what Kant is saying is that insofar as we act morally that is insofar as our actions have moral worth what confers moral worth is precisely our capacity to rise above self-interest and prudence and inclination and to act out of duty some years ago I read about a spelling bee and there was a young man who was declared the winner
of the spelling bee a kid named Andrew thirteen years old the winning word the word that he was able to spell was echolalia does anyone know what echolalia is but it's not some type of flower no it means the tendency to repeat as an echo to repeat what you've heard anyhow he's he misspelled it actually but the judges misheard him they thought he had spelled it correctly and awarded him the championship of the National Spelling Bee and he went to the judges afterward and said actually I misspelled it I don't deserve the prize and he
was regarded as a moral hero and he was written up in the New York Times miss speller is a spelling bee here oh there's Andrew with his proud mother and but when he was interviewed afterwards listen to this when he was interviewed afterwards he said quote the judges said I had a lot of integrity but then he added the part of his motive was quote I didn't want to feel like a slime alright what would can't say go ahead I guess it would depend on whether or not that was a marginal reason or the predominant
reason in whether or not and why he decided to confess that he didn't actually spell the word correctly good and what's your name Vasco that's very interesting is there anyone else who has a view about this does this show that Kant's principle is too stringent too demanding what would can't say about this yes I think that Khan actually says that it is the pure motivation that comes out of duty which gives the action moral growth so it's like for example in this case he might have more than one motive he might have the motive of
not feeling like a slime and he might have the motive of doing the right thing for in and of itself out of duty and so while there's more than one motivation going on there does not mean that the action is devoid of moral worth just because he has one other motive so because the motive which involves duty is what gives it new moral roof good and what's your name Judith well Judith I think that your account actually is true to count it's fine to have sentiments and feelings that support doing the right thing provided they
don't provide the reason for acting so I think Judith actually has mounted a pretty good defense of Kant on this question of the motive of duty thank you now let's go back to the three contrasts it's clear at least what Kant means when he says that for an action to have moral worth it must be done for the sake of duty not out of inclination but as we began to see last time there's a connection between Kant's stringent notion of morality and his specially demanding understanding of freedom and that leads us to the second contrast
the link between morality and freedom the second contrast describes two different ways that my will can be determined autonomously and heteronomously according to Kant I am only free when my will is determined autonomously which means what according to a law that I give myself we must be capable if we're capable of freedom as autonomy we must be capable of acting according not to a law that's given or imposed on us but according to a law we give ourselves but where could such a law come from a law that we give ourselves reason if reason determines
my will then the will becomes the power to choose independent of the dictates of nature or inclination or circumstance so connected with Kant's demanding notions of morality and freedom is a specially demanding notion of reasoning well how can reason determine the will there are two ways and this leads to the third contrast Kant says there are two different commands of reason and a command of reason Kant calls an imperative an imperative is simply an ought one kind of imperative perhaps the most familiar kind is a hypothetical impaired relative hypothetical imperatives use instrumental reason if you
want X then do why it's means-ends reasoning if you want a good business reputation then don't shortchange your customers word make it out that's a hypothetical imperative if the action would be good solely as a means to something else Kant writes the imperative is hypothetical if the action is represented as good in itself and therefore it's necessary for a will which of itself accords with reason then the imperative is categorical that's the difference between a categorical imperative and a hypothetical one a categorical imperative commands categorically which just means without reference to or dependence on any
further purpose and so you see the connection among these three parallel contrasts to be free in the sense of autonomous requires that I act not out of a hypothetical imperative but out of a categorical imperative and so you see by these three contrast Kant reasons his way brings us up to his derivation of the categorical imperative well this leaves us one big question what is the categorical imperative what is the supreme principle of morality what is it command of us can't gives three versions three formulations of the categorical imperative I want to mention two and
then see what you think of them the first version the first formula he calls the formula of the universal law Act only on that Maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law and by maksim what is can't mean he means a rule that explains the reason for what you're doing a principle for example promise keeping suppose I need money I need a hundred dollars desperately and I know I can't pay it back anytime soon I come to you and make you a promise of false promise one I
know I can't keep please give me a hundred dollars today lend me the money I will repay you next week is that consistent with the categorical imperative that false promise Kant says no in the test the way we can determine that the false promise is at odds with the categorical imperative is try to universalize it universalize the maxim upon which you're about to act if everybody made false promises when they needed money then nobody would believe those promises there would be no such thing as a promise and so there would be a contradiction the maxim
universalized would undermine itself that's the test that's how we can know that the false promise is wrong well what about the formula of the universal law you find it persuasive what do you think go ahead I have a question about the difference between categorical ISM and a hypothesis that if you're going to match between categorical and hypothetical medical yeah imperatives right if you're going to act with a categorical imperative so that the maxim doesn't undermined itself it sounds like I am going to do X because I want Y I am going to not lie in
dire need because I want the world to function in such a way that promises are kept I don't want to liquidate the practice of promises right it sounds like justifying a means by an ends it seems like an instance of consequentialist reasoning you're sane and what's your name Tim Tim well Tim John Stuart Mill agreed with you he made this he made this criticism of Cod he said if i universalize the maxim and find that the whole practice of promise keeping would be destroyed if universalized i must be appealing somehow to consequences right if that's
the reason not to tell a false promise so John Stuart Mill agreed with that criticism against count but John Stuart Mill was wrong you're in good company though you're in good company Tim Conte has often read as Tim just read him as appealing to consequences the world would be worse off if everybody lied because then no one could rely on anybody else's word therefore you shouldn't lie that's not what is saying exactly although it's easy to interpret him as saying that I think what he's saying is that this is the test this is the test
of whether the maxim corresponds with the categorical imperative it isn't exactly the reason it's not the reason the reason you should universalize to test your maxim is to see whether you are privileged Nguni dan desires over everybody else's it's a way of pointing to this feature this demand of the categorical imperative that the reasons for your action shouldn't depend for their justification on your interests your needs your special circumstances being more important than somebody else's that I think is the moral intuition lying behind the universalization test so let me spell out the second Kant's second
version of the categorical imperative perhaps in a way that's more intuitively accessible than the formula of universal law it's the formula of humanity as an end konna introduces the second version of the categorical imperative with the following line of argument we can't base the categorical imperative on any particular interest purposes or ends because then it would be only relative to the person whose ends they were but suppose there was something whose existence has in itself an absolute value and end in itself then in it and in it alone would there be the ground of a
possible categorical imperative well what is there that we can think of as having its end in itself Kant's answer is this I say that man and in general every rational being exists as an end in himself not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will and here Kahn distinguishes between persons on the one hand and things on the other rational beings are persons they don't just have a relative value for us but if anything has they have an absolute value an intrinsic value that is rational beings have dignity they're worthy of
reverence and respect this line of reasoning leads Kant to the second formulation of the categorical imperative which is this act in such a way that you always treat humanity whether in your own person or in the person of any other never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end so that's the formula of humanity as an end the idea that human beings as rational beings are ends in themselves not open to use merely as a means when I make a false promise to you I'm using you as a means to
my ends to my desire for the hundred dollars and so I'm failing to respect you I'm failing to respect your dignity I'm manipulating you now consider the example of the duty against suicide murder and suicide are at odds with the categorical imperative why if I murder someone I'm taking their life for some purpose either because I'm hired killer or I'm in the throes of some great anger or passion well I have some interest some purpose that's particular for the sake which I'm using them as a means murder violates the categorical imperative for Kant 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 and that capacity for reason that humanity the commands respect that is the ground of dignity that humanity that capacity for reason resides undifferentiated in all of us and so I violate that dignity in my own person if I commit suicide and in
murder if I take somebody else's life from a moral point of view they're the same and the reason they are the same has to do with the universal character and ground of the moral law the reason that we have to respect the dignity of other people has not to do with anything in particular about them and so respect contine respectives unlike love in this way it's unlike sympathy it's unlike solidarity or fellow feeling or altruism because love and those other particular virtues or reasons for caring about other people have to do with who they are
in particular but respect for can't respect is respect for Humanity which is universal for a rational capacity which is universal and that's why violating it in my own case is as objectionable it's violating it in the case of any other questions or objections go ahead I guess I'm somewhat worried about Kant's statement that you cannot use a person as a means because every person is an end in and of themselves because it seems that that every day in order to get something accomplished for that day I must use myself as a means to some end
and I must use the people around me as a means to some end as well for instance suppose that I want to do well in a class and I have to write a paper I have to use myself as a means to write the paper suppose I want to buy something food I must go to the store and use the person working behind the counter as a means for me to purchase my food right that's true you do what's your name Patrick Patrick you're not doing anything wrong you're not violating the categorical imperative when you
use other people as means that's not objectionable provided when we deal with other people for the sake of advancing our projects and purposes and interests which we all do provided we treat them in a way that is consistent with respect for their dignity and what it means to respect them is given by the categorical imperative are you persuaded do you think that Kant has given a compelling account a persuasive account of the supreme principle of morality reread the groundwork and will try to answer that question next time
