of life’s important questions again. Not least in the area of ethics.”
“Didn’t Hume say that you can never prove what is right and what is wrong2 You can’t draw conclusions from is - sentence? to ought-sentences.”
“For Hume it was neither our reason nor our experience that determined the difference between right and wrong. It was simply our sentiments. This was too tenuous a basis for Kant.”
“I can imagine.”
“Kant had always felt that the difference between right and wrong was a matter of reason, not sentiment. In this he agreed with the rationalists, who said the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason. Everybody knows what is right or wrong, not because we have learned it but because it is born in the mind. According to Kant, everybody has ‘practical reason,’ that is, the intelligence that gives us the capacity to discern what is right or wrong in every case.”
“And that is innate?”
“The ability to tell right from wrong is just as innate as all the other attributes of reason. Just as we are all intelligent beings, for example, perceiving everything as having a causal relation, we all have access to the same universal moral law.
“This moral law has the same absolute validity as the physical laws. It is just as basic to our morality as the statements that everything has a cause, or that seven plus five is twelve, are basic to our intelligence.”
“And what does that moral law say?”
“Since it precedes every experience, it is ‘formal.’ That is to say, it is not bound to any particular situation of moral choice. For it applies to all people in all societies at all times. So it does not say you shall do this or this if you find yourself in that or that situation. It says how you are to behave in all situations.”
“But what is the point of having a moral law implanted inside yourself if it doesn’t tell you what to do in specific situations?”
“Kant formulates the moral law as a categorical imperative. By this he means that the moral law is ‘categorical,’ or that it applies to all situations. It is, moreover, ‘imperative,’ which means it is commanding and therefore absolutely authoritative.”
“Kant formulates this ‘categorical imperative’ in several ways. First he says: Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a Universal Law of Nature.”
“So when I do something, I must make sure I want everybody else to do the same if they are in the same situation.”
“Exactly. Only then will you be acting in accordance with the moral law within you. Kant also formulates the ‘categorical imperative’ in this way: Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”
“So we must not exploit other people to our own advantage.”
“No, because every man is an end in himself. But that does not only apply to others, it also applies to you yourself. You must not exploit yourself as a mere means to achieving something, either.”
“It reminds me of the golden rule: Do unto others . . .”
“Yes, that is also a ‘formal’ rule of conduct that basically covers all ethical choices. You could say that the golden rule says the same thing as Kant’s universal law of morals.”
“But surely this is only an assertion. Hume was probably right in that we can’t prove what is right or wrong by reason.”
“According to Kant, the law of morals is just as absolute and just as universal as the law of causality. That cannot be proved by reason either, but it is nevertheless absolute and unalterable. Nobody would deny that.”
“I get the feeling that what we are really talking about is conscience. Because everybody has a conscience, don’t they?”
“Yes. When Kant describes the law of morals, he is describing the human conscience. We cannot prove what our conscience tells us, but we know it, nevertheless.”
“Sometimes I might only be kind and helpful to others because I know it pays off. It could be a way of becoming popular.”
“But if you share with others only to be popular, you are not acting out of respect for moral law. You might be acting in accordance with moral law—and that could be fair enough—but if it is to be a moral action, you must have conquered yourself. Only when you do something purely out of duty can it be called a moral action. Kant’s ethics is therefore sometimes called duty ethics.”
“I can feel it my duty to collect money for the Red Cross or the church bazaar.”
“Yes, and the important thing is that you do it because you know it is right. Even if the money you collect gets lost in the street, or is not sufficient to feed all the mouths it is intended to, you obeyed the moral law. You acted out of good will, and according to Kant, it is this good will which determines whether or not the action was morally right, not the consequences of the action. Kant’s ethics is therefore also called a good will ethic.”
“Why was it so important to him to know exactly when one acts out of respect for moral law? Surely the most important thing is that what we do really helps other peo-pie.”
“Indeed it is and Kant would certainly not disagree. But only when we know in ourselves that we are acting out of respect for moral law are we acting freely.”
“We act freely only when we obey a law? Isn’t that kind of peculiar?”
“Not according to Kant. You perhaps remember that he had to ‘assume’or ‘postulate’ that man has a free will. This is an important point, because Kant also said that everything obeys the law of causality. How, then, can we have a free will?”
“Search me.”
“On this point Kant divides man into two parts in a way not dissimilar to the way Descartes claimed that man was a ‘dual creature,’ one with both a body and a mind. As material creatures, we are wholly and fully at the mercy of causality’s unbreakable law, says Kant. We do not decide what we perceive—perception comes to us through necessity and influences us whether we like it or not. But we are not only material creatures—we are also creatures of reason.
“As material beings we belong wholly to the natural world. We are therefore subject to causal relations. As such, we have no free will. But as rational beings we have a part in what Kant calls das Ding an sich—that is, the world as it exists in itself, independent of our sensory impressions. Only when we follow our ‘practical reason’— which enables us to make moral choices—do we exercise our free will, because when we conform to moral law, it is we who make the law we are conforming to.”
“Yes, that’s true in a way. It is me, or something in me, which tells me not to be mean to others.”
“So when you choose not to be mean—even if it is against your own interests—you are then acting freely.”
“You’re not especially free or independent if you just do whatever you want, in any case.”
“One can become a slave to all kinds of things. One can even become a slave to one’s own egoism. Independence and freedom are exactly what are required to rise above one’s desires and vices.”
“What about animals? I suppose they just follow their inclinations and needs. They don’t have any freedom to follow moral law, do they?”
“No, that’s the difference between animals and humans.”
“I see that now.”
“And finally we could perhaps say that Kant succeeded in showing the way out of the impasse that philosophy had reached in the struggle between rationalism and empiricism. With Kant, an era in the history of philosophy is therefore at an end. He died in 1804, when the cultural epoch we call Romanticism was in the ascendant. One of his most quoted sayings is carved on his gravestone in Konigsberg: Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the reflection dwells on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.’ “
Alberto leaned back in his chair. “That’s it,” he said. “I think I have told you what’s most important about Kant.”
“Anyway, it’s a quarter past four.”
“But there is just one thing. Please give me a minute.”
“I never leave the classroom before the teacher is finished.”
“Did I say that Kant believed we had no freedom if we lived only as creatures of the senses?”
