Kant’s beliefs on logic and philosophy
·
Logic must be
universal – it must be something everyone can understand and use
·
Philosophy
should come from a priori deduction,
which is figuring something out simply by using rationality and logic without looking
at any possible future effects.
Subjective reality doesn’t matter – we should be looking at logic as if
in a vacuum.
·
Group morals
come from empirical (past) evidence and reality. These Kant calls practical anthropology. These are the laws we create in our
communities and reflect justice more than a pure philosophical morality.
·
Morality which
comes purely from philosophy and from reasoning out laws in the a priori manner Kant calls morals
proper.
·
Morality comes
from the intent of the purpose rather than their actions. For instance, someone can do an action which
is moral for personally selfish reasons.
If we give to charity because of the tax break, even though giving to
charity is a moral action, we have not done it for the moral reason so we are
not doing a moral act. Basically, in
looking at morality you always have to distinguish between the morality of the
act and the morality of the person: finding the morality of the act comes from
the categorical imperative, finding the morality of the person comes from their
intent.
·
The reason we
look at intent is that the same action done by two different people can cause
two widely different reactions.
Sometimes people can do something meaning well but bad results, and
sometimes people do something selfishly yet others are helped. That is we must hold people responsible for
their intent, but not the results – they cannot control the results.
·
Kant believes
that the will of a person is the most important aspect to morality because that
is the only thing which can be purely good.
This will must be autonomous or free to be able
to use rationality and logic to be able to decide upon morality.
·
Duty is what
we have to do to be a moral person. If
we know something is a moral act, it is our duty to do that and not engage in
an immoral act.
·
We must follow
our duty regardless of whether it makes us happy or will result in good things
for us. Happiness is simply one of many
selfish ends which if we were trying to achieve would make our act a
hypothetical imperative and nor a moral imperative.
·
It is better
to act rightly than to produce good effects.
Remember that we cannot gauge the future effects so the best thing to do
is what we know is right by acting out our moral duty.
·
We must ALWAYS
act morally – we cannot choose when it would be convenient.
·
Just because
something turns out to not be moral does not make it automatically immoral, it
could be amoral.
·
An imperative
is simply a statement which is a model.
They use the word ought. We use
these statements to reason out whether something is a moral act.
·
A hypothetical
imperative is a statement using the word ‘ought’ which would lead to a chosen
effect. For example, if you want to be a
lawyer you ought to go to law school.
Here the word ought simply means ‘should’, that is, if you want result B
you must engage in action A.
Hypothetical imperatives are not moral in and of themselves but they do
show a certain action to be GOOD insomuch as it will result in a positive
benefit. Kant describes hypothetical
imperatives as those which “represent the practical necessity of a possible
action as means to something else that is willed.” In my opinion, the resolution is a
hypothetical imperative. It asks us to
protect the right of shielding sources to achieve a certain end: in this case,
the ends would be a healthy democracy with a free press.
·
Categorical
imperatives use the word ‘ought’ to show our true moral duty. They are something we ought to do,
period. It does not matter if we would
get any effects.
·
To determine
whether something is a categorical imperative we must follow several steps:
1.
First we must
separate out the principle or maxim that the statement is based on. If we were saying ‘one ought to keep their
promises’ the maxim would be that we should tell the truth. Maxims and principles must be good in and of
themselves for the act to be moral. This
is because the later steps can be met by statements which do not hold true
moral worth, so the original principle will help us to decide whether the act
can be moral.
2.
Once we
realize the maxim is good, we must decide whether it is moral by deciding
whether it can be universal. That is, we
must ask ourselves, if everyone did this act, would it still be a good thing or
would it become self-defeating? The
example Kant gives is of keeping promises: suppose that we are in financial
need and we promise to repay a loan by a friend even though we know we cannot
afford to. Could we universalize
this? No, because if everyone did such a
thing in the end there would be no promises.
Remember if it cannot be universalized, that does not always make it
immoral, it can be simply amoral. Also
remember that there are actions which can be universalized that are not moral,
such as painting a house pink. Everyone
can paint their house pink, but it is not a moral act. That is why the principle must be moral, too.
3.
The finishing
step is more of a double check process.
Kant tells us that we cannot use man as a means. He also tells us in figuring out any moral
decision we must consider ourselves “in the realm of ends”. What this basically means is that we must
assume our moral equality with other people and decide on a moral duty without
considering any special benefits for ourselves.
·
Basically,
means are the action we take to get to a result. Ends are the results of any action we
take. There are two differing schools of
thought as to which we lean to. Some say
the ends justify the means: that is, even if we have to hurt people to do
something if we end up with a better society it’s
o.k. Another school of thought says we
must look to the means: we have to act in purely good ways and if the ends are
good, good for us, but if not, it’s not our fault because we acted
morally. Obviously Kant went for the
latter approach.
·
Kant tells us
one of the checking points we use to decide if something is moral is that we
can never use man as a means, we must always use her as an end in herself. What he tells us is that we must think of
every person’s will as being an end in itself and it must be able to determine
its own morality so we cannot infringe on it in any way. If we used someone strictly for our benefit
we may interfere with their moral autonomy.
Even more importantly, though, it would simply be wrong. We cannot use another person solely for our
benefit. Now, Kant does give us leeway
in that if we use people partly as a means while still respecting them as an
ends it’s okay. But basically the whole
using man as a means thing says we can’t practice slavery and we can’t hire
people really cheaply and then abuse them.
We can’t treat humans as tools.
We have to treat them with respect to their dignity. You probably heard the man as a means
argument on the capital punishment topic: we said it’s immoral to kill for
deterrence because we would simply be using the killers as a means to the end
of social control.