(2) The Authority of Duty.—A duty, in Kant's words, is a categorical imperative—it claims the absolute right of way as against immediate inclination. That which, on one side, is the constraint of natural desire, is, on the other, the authoritative claim of the right end to regulate. Over against the course of action most immediately urgent, most easy and comfortable, so congenial as at once to motivate action unless checked, stands another course, representing a wider and more far-reaching point of view, and hence furnishing the rational end of the situation. However lacking in intensity, however austere this end, it stands for the whole self, and is therefore felt to be rightly supreme over any partial tendency. But since it looks to realization in an uncertain future, rather than permission just to let go what is most urgent at the moment, it requires effort, hard work, work of attention more or less repulsive and uncongenial. Hence that sense of stress and strain, of being pulled one way by inclination and another by the claims of right, so characteristic of an experience of obligation.
Social Character of Duties.—But this statement describes the experience only on its formal side. In the concrete, that end which possesses claim to regulate desire is the one which grows out of the social position or function of the agent, out of a course of action to which he is committed by a regular, socially established connection between himself and others. The man who has assumed the position of a husband and a parent has by that very fact entered upon a line of action, something continuous, running far into the future; something so fundamental that it modifies and pervades his other activities, requiring them to be coördinated or rearranged from its point of view. The same thing holds, of course, of the calling of a doctor, a lawyer, a merchant, a banker, a judge, or other officer of the State. Each social calling implies a continuous, regular mode of action, binding together into a whole a multitude of acts occurring at different times, and giving rise to definite expectations and demands on the part of others. Every relationship in life, is, as it were, a tacit or expressed contract with others, committing one, by the simple fact that he occupies that relationship, to a corresponding mode of action. Every one, willy-nilly, occupies a social position; if not a parent, he is a child; if not an officer, then a citizen of the State; if not pursuing an occupation, he is in preparation for an occupation, or else is living upon the results of the labors of others.
Connection with Selfhood.—Every one, in short, is in general relations to others,—relationships which enter so internally and so intimately into the very make-up of his being that he is not morally free to pick and choose, saying, this good is really my affair, that other one not. The mode of action which is required by the fact that the person is a member of a complex social network is a more final expression of his own nature than is the temporarily intense instinctive appetite, or the habit which has become "second nature." It is not for the individual to say, the latter is attractive and therefore really mine, while the former is repellant and therefore an alien intruder, to be surrendered to only if it cannot be evaded. From this point of view, the conflict of desire and duty, of interest and principle, expresses itself as a conflict between tendencies which have got organized into one's fixed character and which therefore appeal to him just as he is; and those tendencies which relate to the development of a larger self, a self which should take fuller account of social relations. The Kantian theory emphasizes the fact brought out above: viz., that duty represents the authority of an act expressing the reasonable and "universal" self over a casual and partial self; while the utilitarian theory emphasizes the part played by social institutions and demands in creating and enforcing both special duties and the sense of duty in general.
§ 2. KANTIAN THEORY
"Accord with" Duty versus "from" Duty.—Kant points out that acts may be "in accordance with duty" and yet not be done "from duty." "It is always, for example, a matter of duty that a dealer should not overcharge an inexperienced purchaser, and wherever there is much commerce the prudent tradesman does not overcharge.... Men are thus honestly served; but this is not enough to prove that the tradesman so acted from duty and from principles of honesty; his own advantage required it" (Kant's Theory of Ethics, Abbott's translation, p. 13). In such a case the act externally viewed is in accordance with duty; morally viewed, it proceeds from selfish calculation of personal profit, not from duty. This is true in general of all acts which, though outwardly right, spring from considerations of expediency, and are based on the consideration that "honesty (or whatever) is the best policy." Persons are naturally inclined to take care of their health, their property, their children, or whatever belongs to them. Such acts, no matter how much they accord with duty, are not done from duty, but from inclination. If a man is suffering, unfortunate, desirous of death, and yet cherishes his life with no love for it, but from the duty to do so, his motive has truly moral value. So if a mother cares for her child, because she recognizes that it is her duty, the act is truly moral.
From Duty alone Moral.—According to Kant, then, acts alone have moral import that are consciously performed "from duty," that is, with recognition of its authority as their animating spring. "The idea of good and evil (in their moral sense) must not be determined before the moral law, but only after it and by means of it" (Ibid., p. 154). All our desires and inclinations seek naturally for an end which is good—for happiness, success, achievement. No one of them nor all of them put together, then, can possibly supply the motive of acting from duty. Hence duty and its authority must spring from another source, from reason itself, which supplies the consciousness of a law which ought to be the motive of every act, whether it is or not. The utilitarians completely reverse the truth of morals when they say that the idea of the good end comes first and the "right" is that which realizes the good end.
Dual Constitution of Man.—We are all familiar with the notion that man has a dual constitution; that he is a creature both of sense and spirit; that he has a carnal and an ideal nature; a lower and a higher self, a self of appetite and of reason. Now Kant's theory of duty is a peculiar version of this common notion. Man's special ends and purposes all spring from desires and inclinations. These are all for personal happiness and hence without moral worth. They form man's sensuous, appetitive nature, which if not "base" in itself easily becomes so, because it struggles with principle for the office of supplying motives for action. The principle of a law absolutely binding, requires the complete expulsion of the claim of desires to motivate action. (See Kant's Theory, pp. 70-79; 132-136; 159-163.) If a man were an animal, he would have only appetite to follow; if he were a god or angel, he would have only reason. Being man, being a peculiar compound of sense and reason, he has put upon him the problem of resisting the natural prompting of inclination and of accepting the duty of acting from reverence for duty.
Criticism of Kant's Theory.—There is an undoubted fact back of Kant's conception which gives it whatever plausibility it has—the fact that inclinations which are not necessarily evil tend to claim a controlling position, a claim which has to be resisted. The peculiarity of Kant's interpretation lies in its complete and final separation of the two aspects, "higher" and "lower," the appetitive and rational, of man's nature, and it is upon this separation, accordingly, that our discussion will be directed.
I. Duty and the Affections.—In the first place, Kant's absolute separation of sense or appetite from reason and duty, because of its necessary disparagement of the affections leads to a formal and pedantic view of morality. It is one thing to say that desire as it first shows itself sometimes prompts to a morally inadequate end; it is quite another thing to say that any acceptance of an end of desire as a motive is morally wrong—that the act to be right must be first brought under a conscious acknowledgment of some law or principle. Only the exigencies of a ready-made theory would lead any one to think that habitual purposes that express the habitually dominant tendencies and powers of the agent, may not suffice to keep morally sound the main tenor of behavior; that it is impossible for regard for right ends to become organized into character and to be fused into working unity with natural impulses. Only a metaphysical theory regarding the separation of sense and reason in man leads to the denial of this fact.
Between the merchant who is honest in his weights and fixed in his prices merely because he calculates that such a course is to his own advantage, and the merchant (if such a person could exist) who should never sell a spool of thread or a paper of pins without having first reminded himself that his ultimate motive for so doing was respect for the law of duty, there is the ordinary merchant who is honest because he has the desires characteristic of an honest man. Schiller has made fun of the artificial stringency of Kant's theory in some verses which represent a disciple coming to Kant with his perplexity: