(2) Morality is not qualified, but certain in its requirements. The most inexperienced, the humblest, the one most restricted in his circumstances and opportunities, must know what is morally required as surely as the wisest and most educated. Hence moral reason must utter its precepts clearly and unambiguously. But no one can be sure what happiness is, or whether a given act will bring joy or sorrow. "The problem of determining certainly what action would promote the happiness of a rational being is insoluble." (Abbott's Kant, p. 36.) The demand for certainty of precepts in moral matters also requires a special faculty.
(3) Morality, which is inexorable and certain in its demands, is also universal in its requirements. Its laws are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, the same for one as for another. Now happiness notoriously varies with the condition and circumstances of a person, as well as with the conditions of different peoples and epochs. Intelligence with reference to happiness can only give counsel, not even rules, so variable is happiness. It can only advise that upon the average, under certain conditions, a given course of action has usually promoted happiness. When we add that the commands of morality are also universal with respect to the different inclinations of different individuals, we are made emphatically aware of the necessity of a rational standpoint, which in its impartiality totally transcends the ends and plans that grow out of the ordinary experience of an individual.
An A Priori Reason Kant's Solution.—The net outcome is that only a reason which is separate and independent of all experience is capable of meeting the requirements of morality. What smacks in its origin and aim of experience is tainted with self-love; is partial, temporary, uncertain, and relative or dependent. The moral law is unqualified, necessary, and universal. Hence we have to recognize in man as a moral being a faculty of reason which expresses itself in the law of conduct a priori to all experience of desire, pleasure, and pain. Besides his sensuous nature (with respect to which knowledge is bound up with appetite) man has a purely rational nature, which manifests itself in the consciousness of the absolute authority of universal law.[160]
Formal Character of Such Reason.—This extreme separation of reason from experience brings with it, however, a serious problem. We shall first state this problem; and then show that its artificial and insoluble character serves as a refutation of Kant's theory of a transcendental, or wholly non-natural and non-empirical, mode of knowledge. Reason which is wholly independent of experience of desires and their results is, as Kant expressly declares, purely formal. (Abbott's Kant, p. 33; p. 114.) That is to say, it is empty; it does not point out or indicate anything particular to be done. It cannot say be industrious, or prudent, generous; give, or refrain from giving, so much money to this particular man at this particular time under just these circumstances. All it says is that morality is rational and requires man to follow the law of reason. But the law of reason is just that a man should follow the law of reason. And to the inevitable inquiry "What then is the law of reason?" the answer still is: To follow the law of reason. How do we break out of this empty circle into specific knowledge of the specific right things to be done? Kant has an answer, which we shall now consider.
Kant's Method.—He proceeds as follows: The law is indeed purely formal or empty (since, once more, all specific ends are "empirical" and changeable), but it is so because it is universal. Now nothing which is universal can contradict itself. All we need to do is to take any proposed principle of any act and ask ourselves whether it can be universalized without self-inconsistency. If it cannot be, the act is wrong. If it can be, the act is right. For example:
"May I, when in distress, make a promise with the intention not to keep it?... The shortest way, and an unerring one to discover the answer to the question whether a lying promise is consistent with duty, is to ask myself, Should I be content that my maxim (to extricate myself from trouble by a false promise) should hold good as a universal law, for myself as well as for others? And should I be able to say to myself, every one may make a deceitful promise when he finds himself in a difficulty from which he cannot otherwise extricate himself? Then I personally become aware that while I can will the lie, I can by no means will that lying should be a universal law. For with such a law there would be no such thing as a promise. No one should have any faith in the proffered intention, or, if they do so over hastily, would pay one back in one's own coin at the first opportunity" (Op. cit., p. 19).
The principle if made universal simply contradicts itself, and thus reveals that it is no principle at all, not rational. Summing this up in a formula, we get as our standard of right action the principle: "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature" (Op. cit., p. 39).
The procedure thus indicated seems simple. As long as an individual considers the purpose or motive of his action as if it were merely a matter of that one deed; as if it were an isolated thing, there is no rationality, no consciousness of moral law or principle. But let the individual imagine himself gifted with such power that, if he acts, the motive of his act will become a fixed, a regular law in the constitution of things. Would he, as a rational being, be willing to bring about such a universalization,—can he, with equanimity as a reasonable being, contemplate such an outcome? If he can, the act is right; if not (as in the case of making a lying promise), wrong.
No sensible person would question the instructiveness of this scheme in the concrete. It indicates that the value of reason—of abstraction and generalization—in conduct is to help us escape from the partiality that flows from desire and emotion in their first and superficial manifestations, and to attain a more unified and permanent end. As a method (though not the only one) of realizing the full meaning of a proposed course of action, nothing could be better than asking ourselves how we should like to be committed forever to its principle; how we should like to have others committed to it and to treat us according to it? Such a method is well calculated to make us face our proposed end in its impartial consequences; to teach the danger of cherishing merely those results which are most congenial to our passing whim and our narrow conception of personal profit. In short, by generalizing a purpose we make its general character evident.
But this method does not proceed (as Kant would have it) from a mere consideration of moral law apart from a concrete end, but from an end in so far as it persistently approves itself to reflection after an adequate survey of it in all its bearings. It is the possibility of generalizing the concrete end that Kant falls back upon.