A Paper about Kantian Morality
Sorry I haven’t updated for an extremely long time. Anyway, here is a paper I wrote for my philosophy class comparing Kant to Mill. It’s answering the question of whether moral laws should be absolute or admit of certain exceptions. It was only supposed to be 5 pages long, so I obviously haven’t included all the possible counterarguments.
I’m not sure if I actually believe the entirety of what I wrote, but hey, whatever.
In formulating a morality upon which to base our actions, we will inevitably have to decide upon the level of absoluteness that ought to underly its groundwork. Should our moral laws allow some amount of ambiguity to reside within, or should they command our actions categorically? If the former were the case, we would allow a certain flexibility to permeate the general laws of morality, one that would permit us to under various circumstances deviate from our usual obligations. In the latter case, however, that in which only categorical laws would command us, we could never permit ourselves to find any exception to said laws, that is, we would have to obey them no matter what circumstances arose. Our moral system would consist of an absolute code, one that we could never break while simultaneously considering ourselves to be acting out of morality. The first claim, that moral laws must admit of exceptions, represents a substantial part of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian view, whereas the second claim, that all of morality ought to be categorical and absolute, characterizes the foundation of Immanuel Kant’s moral framework. Though Mill’s philosophy at first seems to coincide with common perceptions of morality, the non-absoluteness of his moral code undermines the self-consistency in the nature of moral obligation and objectivity; Kant, however, derives his laws on the basis of self-consistency alone, proving that only his morality could actually exist.
If we wish to determine which moral code we ought to let govern our behavior, we must first define what morality means. To begin, let us acknowledge that any set of laws must be inherently self-consistent, for nothing logically contradictory (originally spelled: kantradictory) could ever exist in this universe; all laws, whether scientific or moral, must be non-paradoxical. If we then wish to base our actions upon these moral laws, such a choice obliges us to adhere to their mandates. Simply by definition, morality tells us what we ought to do; it commands the should. If we depart from the dictates of morality (which we as humans have the capability to do), then we can no longer consider our actions moral. Thus, I found this paper on the assumption that we as humans choose to act from morality (the question of whether we ought to make this choice at all is quite interesting, but not relevant to the present subject) and will now attempt to describe at least in part (I could not describe them in full in such a short space) the properties of that morality. Let us begin with Mill.
In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill outlines his morality in terms of the greatest happiness principle, in which “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill 7). As such, he argues, we should always act while considering happiness the ultimate end. Mill defines said happiness as the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain, unhappiness as the reverse (Mill 7). Though his theory resembles classical hedonism in its fundamental nature, with pleasure serving as the ultimate goal, Mill does not treat every pleasure equally, but instead fully acknowledges “the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures” (Mill 8). In other words, Mill applies a strong qualitative filter to the pleasures we seek, enabling us, for example, to distinguish between the pleasure of drunkenness and the pleasure of giving alms.
Avoiding the pitfall of classical hedonism—if we require a standard to compare pleasures, then pleasure is not the ultimate end—Mill argues that the only standard we can employ to differentiate between good pleasures and bad is experience alone. A person who has been both drunk and the leader of a charity (though hopefully not at the same time) will for the most part say that the latter provides more pleasure than the former. Mill then proceeds to detail the ultimate pleasure, that for which we all strive, whether knowingly or not, as that of social expediency (also called social utility), or the advancement of society. The cause of this feeling, the force that drives us to seek this ultimate pleasure, is “the essence of the conscience,” which he describes as “a mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our standard of right… a subjective feeling in our own minds” (Mill 29). Describing the conscience as an entity unique to mankind, Mill solidifies the foundation of the moral standard of utilitarianism.
Upon examining some of the general directives of social utility, such as preserving life or keeping promises, one will find that they often coincide with those of Kantian morality (to follow), at least in terms of their consequences. However, as per Mill, social utility is the ultimate end, at times “so important as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice” (Mill 63). In other words, we can always find exception to any normally followed moral law when we view the situation through a utilitarian lens. For instance, despite the fact that most people consider the act of stealing immoral, if one needed to commit this act in order to save another’s life, Mill’s moral code would allow it, often naming such an act as “not only… allowable, but a duty” (Mill 63). This again arises from the idea of the conscience, that which gives us pleasure for acting out of social expediency, this pleasure being the ultimate end. We can see no moral law as absolute, for each law would yield a number (though few) of particular cases requiring us to break it. Kant, however, argues otherwise.
In Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant bases his ethics on the idea of the a priori, or deduction based on logic alone. The grounding for a priori reasoning rests on the idea that in order for something to exist, it must be entirely self-consistent. The law of addition, for example, is a priori because it contains no logical contradictions. If, however, a law of mathematics held that 4 + 4 = 8, but 4 + 3 = 9, it could not logically exist, for no standard could explain how both of those equations could ever be in harmony simultaneously. The understanding of self-consistency’s necessity, says Kant, “can admittedly be found only in a rational being insofar as this representation… is the determining ground of the will,” or rather this understanding distinguishes humans as rational beings (Kant 13). Therefore, as human beings, we ought to recognize that if morality exists, it as well must contain no logical inconsistencies.
According to Kant, in order for a moral code to be self-consistent, its laws must be categorical; they must admit of no exceptions. Each law must have as its ultimate property complete universalizability; it can only exist if it “contains in itself its own universal validity for every rational being” (Kant 42). A law requires universalizability, he says, because of a priori reasoning. If a law on occasion allowed exceptions to seep through, then the principle upon which that law was founded would melt away. For example, Kant states as one universal maxim “to be truthful in all declarations is… a sacred and unconditionally commanding law of reason” (Kant 65). In other words, if a universal law permitted one to lie in certain circumstances, the principle of truth-telling would fall apart. We would learn not to expect the truth when asking questions, and when one does not expect truth in the first place, lying can have no function. Thus, if lying had no function, neither would a law that permitted it. Because this is irrational, says Kant, and because rational beings cannot (or at least ought not) will the irrational, “we find that we actually do not will that our maxim should become a universal law” (Kant 32). As such, because of our rationality, we can only truly will a categorical morality, one that holds true without regard for the nature of the situation.
The first qualms with Kant’s moral theory arise when we begin to search for those particular cases which might rightly allow a transgression of our duty to morality. We can first look at the classic example of lying in order to save someone’s life (as per Kant, the preservation of human life is also categorical). If we imagine a situation in which a murderer demands we confess the location of our family in hiding (so that he can murder them), the majority of people would lie in order to protect their family. According to Mill, this act would be exactly in accord with (and for the sake of) social utility, for in no way would society benefit more from the death of an innocent family than from the misleading of a killer. Furthermore, Mill would argue that our conscience, the feeling that is our binding force to social utility, would cause us to feel more pleasure at saving our family than at not. Thus, it seems as if Mill’s theory proves quite successful at both illuminating and solving the obvious inadequacies of Kant’s morality, for who would ever be inclined to sacrifice their family simply in order to uphold a moral law?
According to Kant, however, inclination ought to play no part in morality. Though it may often accompany moral acts, it surely does not define them, as inclinations are subjective by nature. Moral acts instead can only be defined a priori, and they must be categorical in order to be considered moral. As applied to the above example, the act of lying to a killer in fact destroys the self-consistency of the code. If morality permitted not only you, but each person in a similar situation to lie as well, eventually lies would come to be expected, and lying to a murderer would no longer have any functional impact; the “maxim would destroy itself just as soon as it was made a universal law” (Kant 15). In a more general sense, if the code to which we must oblige ourselves in order to be moral allowed for exceptions, if it allowed for people in certain situations to act immorally while others could not, it would destroy the institution upon which it was built. Therefore, we as rational creatures could not consider that code to exist, for it would falter in its consistency. A code that is obligatory in nature by definition cannot acknowledge the existence of any reason for the disregard of its own obligatory power. To be obliged not to be obliged is simply paradoxical (imagine hearing “I order you not to follow this order”). Such a code simply does not exist. In fact, we could only avoid this contradiction by arguing that general rules such as truth-telling and promise-keeping are not moral obligations at all, but instead conform to a still higher standard.
Social utility, says Mill, reigns supreme as “the ultimate sanction of morality.” Furthermore, the existence of this highest standard we suppose through an internal, subjective feeling called the conscience (Mill 29). However, in examining Mill’s philosophy, we cannot forget that though this feeling may exist and may present itself similarly to many people, it is subjective nonetheless. Even Mill admits that often what we as a society consider expedient at one time later “[passes] into the rank of a universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny” (Mill 63). Thus, if the majority of people may at once be universally wrong, why should we base our morality upon their feelings? In fact, basing a moral code on inclinations alone destroys its entire sense of objectivity, a necessary property if it is derived a priori (if it exists). Mill creates his morality from experience, from that which we understand as human nature, from that which is. However, “all imperatives are expressed by an ought,” so we cannot in any way derive a pure morality from that which presently is (Kant 24). Therefore, if morality is an absolute code that tells us what we ought to do, we cannot base it on something as mutable and inconsistent as a personal sentiment, for that would destroy its objective nature entirely. As a final note, even if that sentiment were the highest end, we would still be left with the question as to why we should obey it at all, the debate continuing indefinitely.
As we can now see, only a morality completely free from inconsistencies can ever serve as our governing code. If it exists, it must have the properties of every law of science or mathematics and must conform to no higher standard than itself, for how could there ever be a standard higher than the necessity of self-consistency for existence? A morality as such must be completely categorical; it must admit of no exceptions whatsoever. Morality is the mandate of what we ought to do always, and we can never accept it as moral to disregard it; if we did, we would be basing our lives’ actions on a paradox. Though Mill’s utilitarianism harmonizes often with our instincts of right and wrong, it is not based on that highest principle of self-consistency. It is instead is based upon inconsistent human feelings and sentiments. Both philosophers agree that our feelings are both subjective and variable, so how could we derive from them an objective code of behavior? The only way to skirt around Kant’s morality would be to deny the definition of existence, and to deny that we ought to do what we ought to do. Whether one can actually answer this question, however, I shall decide in my next paper.
