The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

by A. D. Lindsay

Kant seeks to derive his imperative from the contrast between acting as a moral agent and following inclination. Man regards himself as a moral agent, morally responsible for his conduct, and he regards others as morally responsible, whatever his or their particular nature or character may be. That means that he must act as he thinks any one else would be bound to act, and from this Kant deduces his formulation of the categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will to be a universal law." Another formula indicates more clearly the relation of duty to a society of moral agents responsible to one another: "Act so that you treat humanity, in your person and in the person of every one else, always as an end as well as a means, never merely as a means." It is only by following such imperatives that we can rise above the promptings of circumstance, for only thus is the will self-legislative. In obeying such an imperative our will is self-determined, for it is following a principle that is derived from man's nature as independent and transcendent of the world of phenomena. Hence in moral action we are in contact with the reality of things more truly than in any understanding of phenomena. The moral law has a dignity which no natural inclinations or likings can have, and the good-will, the will which follows such a law, has a similar worth and dignity. "There is nothing in the world--nay, even beyond the world--nothing conceivable, which can be regarded as good without qualification, saving alone a good will."

Such in outline is Kant's account of morality. A discussion of some of the difficulties which a consideration of it suggests may help to make its purport more clear. Kant holds that the principles of right action can be deduced directly from the imperative he has formulated, and need take therefore no account of historical circumstance. Now, it is easy to show that, when we do an action which we know to be wrong, we are making an exception in our own favour. We cannot universalise the maxim of our own conduct. When we do what we know to be wrong, we recognise what is right. We say, "This is how any one ought to act in these circumstances, but I am not going to do it." We must learn to look upon ourselves as we should look upon and judge any other moral agent. If, when taxed with wrongdoing, we reply, "I wanted to do it," or "That is the kind of person I am," or "That is the way I am made," we are abandoning the moral position, and the answer is, "Whether you wanted it or not, you ought not to have done it," or, "Well, you ought to become different." But this does not help us when, looking at actions from a moral standpoint, it is difficult to say what ought to be done. Kant tries to show that wrong action, if universalised, is always contradictory. He takes the instance of telling a lie. If that were universal no one would believe any one else, and there would be no point in telling a lie. Lying is essentially parasitical. But this does not help us in the familiar problem in casuistry, whether it is allowable to tell a lie to save life. For here we have a conflict between two maxims, both of which can be universalised. We cannot regard such a situation as simply involving a question of telling the truth or of saving life. We must consider the circumstances of the case. This is even more evident if we apply Kant's rule to the question of whether celibacy is ever justified. If celibacy were universal, there would soon be nobody to be celibate, but it does not therefore follow that some people under certain circumstances ought not to be celibate. The question cannot be answered without reference to circumstances. The moral of this is that the categorical imperative does not enable us to act without individual moral judgment in individual cases. Further, in one of the instances which Kant gives he admits that there are certain ways of action which might be universalised, but which he nevertheless holds to be wrong. He instances the duty of being industrious. A society could quite well be imagined in which every one was lazy, but he says, "It cannot be willed." The ultimate appeal here is to what the moral reason wills. That means that we must admit that the moral reason or moral judgment has a content not derivable simply from the conception of the moral law; that there are certain kinds of life, certain kinds of action, which we judge to be good, and others which we judge to be bad. But, if this is so, we must give up the sharp separation Kant makes between the moral law and nature, and allow that things in nature can have a moral value. It may still be true that they only have moral value through their relation to a good will, and have no moral significance apart from such a relation.

The difficulties created by Kant's sharp separation of the moral and the phenomenal worlds are equally apparent in his discussion of motives. He conceives the individual as phenomenal, to be determined solely by pleasure and pain. The power of the moral law is manifest, therefore, when its commands run counter to inclination, and the motive of respect for the moral law conquers inclination. It is true to say that a man's likes and dislikes in themselves are not to the point when we are asking what he ought to do, but Kant sometimes speaks as though there could be no moral value in an action which did not go against inclination. This is perilously near that morbid theory of conscience which assumes that the fact that an action would be very disagreeable to the agent is itself proof that the proposal to perform it is the voice of conscience. Here again we have to say that the fact that inclinations viewed merely as inclinations have no moral value, does not show that, relatively to the good will, one may not be better than another. There is nothing to be proud of in the fact that we dislike doing our duty.

This sharp separation between the world of morality and science was somewhat tempered in Kant's third Critique, which we shall examine in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VII

THE "CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT"--ÆSTHETICS AND TELEOLOGY

The Critique of Judgment is at once the most interesting and the most difficult of Kant's three Critiques. It seems to cover a much wider ground than either of the two earlier Critiques. It concerns itself with the relation of empirical investigation to the a priori principles of understanding discussed in the first Critique, with an attempt to bridge the gulf between the world of freedom and the world of nature as described in the second Critique, with a discussion of the principles of æsthetics and of the conflict between the rival claims of the principles of mechanism and teleology, a conflict which, since the discoveries of Darwin and the increasing interest taken in biology, is becoming every day more important. On all these points Kant has much of importance to say. Modern theories of æsthetic are mainly based on an acceptance of the distinctions which he first laid down clearly. Much modern philosophy of a type which is little in sympathy with the doctrines of the first Critique--Pragmatism, for example--is an elaboration of his account of the regulative principles which guide empirical investigation, while speculation on the rival methods of biology has hardly advanced beyond the solution suggested by Kant. Yet the very suggestiveness of this book makes it hard to understand. It is difficult to see the connection which Kant supposed to exist between these very various problems. The form of the book, like the form of the first Critique, is marked by subdivisions suggested by formal logic, which seem to have little or no connection with the subjects discussed under them, so that the whole is a curious combination of formal system and discursive content. Kant himself regarded this Critique as the triumphant vindication of his whole system, in that it brought together and reconciled subjects which he had previously distinguished too sharply. Many later writers have thought rather that in it the inconsistencies which they believe to exist in Kant's thought come to a head.

We have not space here to vindicate the Critique of Judgment as "the crowning phase of the critical philosophy," as a recent writer has called it, or to examine singly Kant's treatment of the various subjects of interest with which it is concerned. It is important, however, to follow the connection which Kant supposed to exist between these different subjects. If we can understand that, we shall gain considerable insight into Kant's system as a whole.

Kant names the book the Critique of Judgment, or, more exactly, the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment. Judgment is distinguished from understanding, whose principles are more peculiarly the subject of the first Critique. The understanding, according to Kant, is the faculty of rules. Judgment is shown in the application of rules to individual instances. It is the element of individuality and spontaneity in all thinking, for which no rules can be discovered. Judgment cannot be taught, different men possess it in different degrees; it is akin to genius. When, then, Kant turns to examine the faculty of judgment, he is asking whether the mind, in dealing with individuals in all their variety and difference, and in attempting to understand them, is guided by any general rules or principles. The import of this question becomes clear in his relation of it to the familiar question of causation. The principle of causation, as we have seen, is, according to Kant, an a priori principle of the understanding, and is assumed in all experience; but it does not of itself enable us to determine in any particular case what causes what. That is the task of empirical investigation, and needs, as we know, the imagination and insight of the individual investigator; in Kantian language, it is the work of the faculty of judgment. Besides the a priori principle of causation, therefore, we have an indefinite number of empirical causal laws. Kant asks whether the scientist in investigating such laws, and more particularly in considering their relation to one another, is guided by any principles. He finds that the scientist assumes that this indefinite variety is capable of being reduced to some kind of unity, assumes that there is continuity in nature, that knowledge will not remain an aggregate of disconnected rules. Chemistry, for example, has discovered that the overwhelming variety of natural changes can be reduced to the action and interaction of a small number of elements. The chemist proposes to go on and see whether the different elements may not themselves be seen to be forms of one substance.

These assumptions are, according to Kant, quite different from the principles of the understanding. For the latter are grounds of the possibility of experience. We cannot deny them without making experience unmeaning. This cannot be said of the former. It obviously cannot be essential to experience that the multiplicity of the laws of nature should be reducible to unity, for such unity has never been discovered. Experience has been quite possible without it. This distinction between two kinds of principles Kant expresses by calling those with which we are now concerned regulative. The purpose they serve is the regulation and improvement of knowledge. They do not, like the principles of the understanding, prescribe to nature. We assume in them that nature is, in Kant's words, purposive to the understanding--that is, we first think out what order of nature would be intelligible, and then look to see whether we cannot discover in nature such an order. This assumption does not prove that there is any such order, but in science we act as if it were there to be found out.