USA: +1(669)289-8683 
Sign in
How would Aristotle’s happiness as “functioning well” balance Mill’s notion of utilitarianism as “the greatest good for the greatest number”? And how would this balance reflect upon the Uganda social dynamic, especially for women?
2. Is the treatment of Uganda’s women morally justified, or not? In your answer, draw from the three different moral theories listed above: Aristotle’s Ethics, utilitarianism, and Kant’s Moral philosophy. Then assess these conclusions as you stake out and defend your own position on the issue.
Use MLA guidelines for all in-text citations and reference pages
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Kant’s Moral Philosophy
First published Mon Feb 23, 2004; substantive revision Thu Jul 7, 2016
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that the supreme principle of morality is a standard of rationality that he
dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Kant characterized the CI as an objective, rationally necessary and
unconditional principle that we must always follow despite any natural desires or inclinations we may have to
the contrary. All specific moral requirements, according to Kant, are justified by this principle, which means that
all immoral actions are irrational because they violate the CI. Other philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke and
Aquinas, had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these standards
were either instrumental principles of rationality for satisfying one’s desires, as in Hobbes, or external rational
principles that are discoverable by reason, as in Locke and Aquinas. Kant agreed with many of his predecessors
that an analysis of practical reason reveals the requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental
principles. Yet he also argued that conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle), and hence to moral
requirements themselves, can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based
on his striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free, in the sense of being the
author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is none other than the law of
an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant’s moral philosophy is a conception of reason whose reach in
practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’ to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this
self-governing reason in each person that Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed
of equal worth and deserving of equal respect.
Kant’s most influential positions in moral philosophy are found in The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
Morals (hereafter, “Groundwork”) but he developed, enriched, and in some cases modified those views in later
works such as The Critique of Practical Reason, The Metaphysics of Morals, Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason as well as his essays on history and related topics.
Kant’s Lectures on Ethics, which were lecture notes taken by three of his students on the courses he gave in
moral philosophy, also include relevant material for understanding his views. We will mainly focus on the
foundational doctrines of the Groundwork, even though in recent years some scholars have become dissatisfied
with this standard approach to Kant’s views and have turned their attention to the later works. We find the
standard approach most illuminating, though we will highlight important positions from the later works where
needed.
1. Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy
2. Good Will, Moral Worth and Duty
3. Duty and Respect for Moral Law
4. Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives
5. The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature
6. The Humanity Formula
7. The Autonomy Formula
8. The Kingdom of Ends Formula
9. The Unity of the Formulas
10. Autonomy
11. Virtue and Vice
12. Normative Ethical Theory
13. Teleology or Deontology?
14. Metaethics
Bibliography
Academic Tools
https://plato.stanford.edu/index.html
https://plato.stanford.edu/index.html
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy
The most basic aim of moral philosophy, and so also of the Groundwork, is, in Kant’s view, to “seek out” the
foundational principle of a “metaphysics of morals,” which Kant understands as a system of a priori moral
principles that apply the CI to human persons in all times and cultures. Kant pursues this project through the first
two chapters of the Groundwork. He proceeds by analyzing and elucidating commonsense ideas about morality,
including the ideas of a “good will” and “duty”. The point of this first project is to come up with a precise
statement of the principle or principles on which all of our ordinary moral judgments are based. The judgments
in question are supposed to be those that any normal, sane, adult human being would accept on due rational
reflection. Nowadays, however, many would regard Kant as being overly optimistic about the depth and extent
of moral agreement. But perhaps he is best thought of as drawing on a moral viewpoint that is very widely
shared and which contains some general judgments that are very deeply held. In any case, he does not appear to
take himself to be primarily addressing a genuine moral skeptic such as those who often populate the works of
moral philosophers, that is, someone who doubts that she has any reason to act morally and whose moral
behavior hinges on a rational proof that philosophers might try to give. For instance, when, in the third and final
chapter of the Groundwork, Kant takes up his second fundamental aim, to “establish” this foundational moral
principle as a demand of each person’s own rational will, his conclusion apparently falls short of answering
those who want a proof that we really are bound by moral requirements. He rests this second project on the
position that we — or at least creatures with rational wills — possess autonomy. The argument of this second
project does often appear to try to reach out to a metaphysical fact about our wills. This has led some readers to
the conclusion that he is, after all, trying to justify moral requirements by appealing to a fact — our autonomy —
that even a moral skeptic would have to recognize.
Kant’s analysis of the common moral concepts of “duty” and “good will” led him to believe that we are free and
autonomous as long as morality, itself, is not an illusion. Yet in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant also tried to
show that every event has a cause. Kant recognized that there seems to be a deep tension between these two
claims: If causal determinism is true then, it seems, we cannot have the kind of freedom that morality
presupposes, which is “a kind of causality” that “can be active, independently of alien causes determining it” (G
4:446).
Kant thought that the only way to resolve this apparent conflict is to distinguish between phenomena, which is
what we know through experience, and noumena, which we can consistently think but not know through
experience. Our knowledge and understanding of the empirical world, Kant argued, can only arise within the
limits of our perceptual and cognitive powers. We should not assume, however, that we know all that may be
true about “things in themselves,” although we lack the “intellectual intuition” that would be needed to learn
about such things.
These distinctions, according to Kant, allow us to resolve the “antinomy” about free will by interpreting the
“thesis” that free will is possible as about noumena and the “antithesis” that every event has a cause as about
phenomena. Morality thus presupposes that agents, in an incomprehensible “intelligible world,” are able to make
things happen by their own free choices in a “sensible world” in which causal determinism is true.
Many of Kant’s commentators, who are skeptical about these apparently exorbitant metaphysical claims, have
attempted to make sense of his discussions of the intelligible and sensible worlds in less metaphysically
demanding ways. On one interpretation (Hudson 1994), one and the same act can be described in wholly
physical terms (as an appearance) and also in irreducibly mental terms (as a thing in itself). On this compatibilist
picture, all acts are causally determined, but a free act is one that can be described as determined by irreducibly
mental causes, and in particular by the causality of reason. A second interpretation holds that the intelligible and
sensible worlds are used as metaphors for two ways of conceiving of one and the same world (Korsgaard 1996;
Allison 1990; Hill 1989a, 1989b). When we are engaging in scientific or empirical investigations, we often take
up a perspective in which we think of things as subject to natural causation, but when we deliberate, act, reason
and judge, we often take up a different perspective, in which we think of ourselves and others as agents who are
not determined by natural causes. When we take up this latter, practical, standpoint, we need not believe that we
or others really are free, in any deep metaphysical sense; we need only operate “under the idea of freedom” (G
4:448). Controversy persists, however, about whether Kant’s conception of freedom requires a “two worlds” or
“two perspectives” account of the sensible and intelligible worlds (Guyer 1987, 2009; Langton 2001; Kohl 2016;
Wood 1984; Hogan 2009).
Although the two most basic aims Kant saw for moral philosophy are to seek out and establish the supreme
principle of morality, they are not, in Kant’s view, its only aims. Moral philosophy, for Kant, is most
fundamentally addressed to the first-person, deliberative question, “What ought I to do?”, and an answer to that
question requires much more than delivering or justifying the fundamental principle of morality. We also need
some account, based on this principle, of the nature and extent of the specific moral duties that apply to us. To
this end, Kant employs his findings from the Groundwork in The Metaphysics of Morals, and offers a
categorization of our basic moral duties to ourselves and others. In addition, Kant thought that moral philosophy
should characterize and explain the demands that morality makes on human psychology and forms of human
social interaction. These topics, among others, are addressed in central chapters of the second Critique, the
Religion and again in the Metaphysics of Morals, and are perhaps given a sustained treatment in Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View. Further, a satisfying answer to the question of what one ought to do would have
to take into account any political and religious requirements there are. Each of these requirement turn out to be,
indirectly at least, also moral obligations for Kant, and are discussed in the Metaphysics of Morals and in
Religion. Finally, moral philosophy should say something about the ultimate end of human endeavor, the
Highest Good, and its relationship to the moral life. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argued that this
Highest Good for humanity is complete moral virtue together with complete happiness, the former being the
condition of our deserving the latter. Unfortunately, Kant noted, virtue does not insure wellbeing and may even
conflict with it. Further, he thought that there is no real possibility of moral perfection in this life and indeed few
of us fully deserve the happiness we are lucky enough to enjoy. Reason cannot prove or disprove the existence
of Divine Providence, on Kant’s view, nor the immortality of the soul, which seem necessary to rectify these
things. Nevertheless, Kant argued, an unlimited amount of time to perfect ourselves (immortality) and a
commensurate achievement of wellbeing (insured by God) are “postulates” required by reason when employed
in moral matters.
Throughout his moral works, Kant returns time and again to the question of the method moral philosophy should
employ when pursuing these aims. A basic theme of these discussions is that the fundamental philosophical
issues of morality must be addressed a priori, that is, without drawing on observations of human beings and
their behavior. Kant’s insistence on an a priori method to seek out and establish fundamental moral principles,
however, does not always appear to be matched by his own practice. The Metaphysics of Morals, for instance, is
meant to be based on a priori rational principles, but many of the specific duties that Kant describes, along with
some of the arguments he gives in support of them, rely on general facts about human beings and our
circumstances that are known from experience.
In one sense, it might seem obvious why Kant insists on an a priori method. A “metaphysics of morals” would
be, more or less, an account of the nature and structure of moral requirements — in effect, a categorization of
duties and values. Such a project would address such questions as, What is a duty? What kinds of duties are
there? What is the good? What kinds of goods are there?, and so on. These appear to be metaphysical questions.
Any principle used to provide such categorizations appears to be a principle of metaphysics, in a sense, but Kant
did not see them as external moral truths that exist independently of rational agents. Moral requirements, instead,
are rational principles that tell us what we have overriding reason to do. Metaphysical principles of this sort are
always sought out and established by a priori methods.
Perhaps something like this was behind Kant’s thinking. However, the considerations he offers for an a priori
method do not all obviously draw on this sort of rationale. The following are three considerations favoring a
priori methods that he emphasizes repeatedly.
The first is that, as Kant and others have conceived of it, ethics initially requires an analysis of our moral
concepts. We must understand the concepts of a “good will”, “obligation”, “duty” and so on, as well as their
logical relationships to one another, before we can determine whether our use of these concepts is justified.
Given that the analysis of concepts is an a priori matter, to the degree that ethics consists of such an analysis,
ethics is a priori as a well.
Of course, even were we to agree with Kant that ethics should begin with analysis, and that analysis is or should
be an entirely a priori undertaking, this would not explain why all of the fundamental questions of moral
philosophy must be pursued a priori. Indeed, one of the most important projects of moral philosophy, for Kant,
is to show that we, as rational agents, are bound by moral requirements and that fully rational agents would
necessarily comply with them. Kant admits that his analytical arguments for the CI are inadequate on their own
because the most they can show is that the CI is the supreme principle of morality if there is such a principle.
Kant must therefore address the possibility that morality itself is an illusion by showing that the CI really is an
unconditional requirement of reason that applies to us. Even though Kant thought that this project of
“establishing” the CI must also be carried out a priori, he did not think we could pursue this project simply by
analyzing our moral concepts or examining the actual behavior of others. What is needed, instead, is a
“synthetic”, but still a priori, kind of argument that starts from ideas of freedom and rational agency and
critically examines the nature and limits of these capacities.
This is the second reason Kant held that fundamental issues in ethics must be addressed with an a priori method:
The ultimate subject matter of ethics is the nature and content of the principles that necessarily determine a
rational will.
Fundamental issues in moral philosophy must also be settled a priori because of the nature of moral
requirements themselves, or so Kant thought. This is a third reason he gives for an a priori method, and it
appears to have been of great importance to Kant: Moral requirements present themselves as being
unconditionally necessary. But an a posteriori method seems ill-suited to discovering and establishing what we
must do whether we feel like doing it or not; surely such a method could only tell us what we actually do. So an
a posteriori method of seeking out and establishing the principle that generates such requirements will not
support the presentation of moral “oughts” as unconditional necessities. Kant argued that empirical observations
could only deliver conclusions about, for instance, the relative advantages of moral behavior in various
circumstances or how pleasing it might be in our own eyes or the eyes of others. Such findings clearly would not
support the unconditional necessity of moral requirements. To appeal to a posteriori considerations would thus
result in a tainted conception of moral requirements. It would view them as demands for which compliance is
not unconditionally necessary, but rather necessary only if additional considerations show it to be advantageous,
optimific or in some other way felicitous. Thus, Kant argued that if moral philosophy is to guard against
undermining the unconditional necessity of obligation in its analysis and defense of moral thought, it must be
carried out entirely a priori.
2. Good Will, Moral Worth and Duty
Kant’s analysis of commonsense ideas begins with the thought that the only thing good without qualification is a
“good will”. While the phrases “he’s good hearted”, “she’s good natured” and “she means well” are common,
“the good will” as Kant thinks of it is not the same as any of these ordinary notions. The idea of a good will is
closer to the idea of a “good person”, or, more archaically, a “person of good will”. This use of the term “will”
early on in analyzing ordinary moral thought prefigures later and more technical discussions concerning the
nature of rational agency. Nevertheless, this idea of a good will is an important commonsense touchstone to
which Kant returns throughout his works. The basic idea, as Kant describes it in the Groundwork, is that what
makes a good person good is his possession of a will that is in a certain way “determined” by, or makes its
decisions on the basis of, the moral law. The idea of a good will is supposed to be the idea of one who is
committed only to make decisions that she holds to be morally worthy and who takes moral considerations in
themselves to be conclusive reasons for guiding her behavior. This sort of disposition or character is something
we all highly value, Kant thought. He believes we value it without limitation or qualification. By this, we
believe, he means primarily two things.
First, unlike anything else, there is no conceivable circumstance in which we regard our own moral goodness as
worth forfeiting simply in order to obtain some desirable object. By contrast, the value of all other desirable
qualities, such as courage or cleverness, can be diminished, forgone, or sacrificed under certain circumstances:
Courage may be laid aside if it requires injustice, and it is better not to be witty if it requires cruelty. There is no
implicit restriction or qualification to the effect that a commitment to give moral considerations decisive weight
is worth honoring, but only under such and such circumstances.
Second, possessing and maintaining a steadfast commitment to moral principles is the very condition under
which anything else is worth having or pursuing. Intelligence and even pleasure are worth having only on the
condition that they do not require giving up one’s fundamental moral convictions. The value of a good will thus
cannot be that it secures certain valuable ends, whether of our own or of others, since their value is entirely
conditional on our possessing and maintaining a good will. Indeed, since a good will is good under any
condition, its goodness must not depend on any particular conditions obtaining. Thus, Kant points out that a
good will must then also be good in itself and not in virtue of its relationship to other things such as the agent’s
own happiness, overall welfare or any other effects it may or may not produce A good will would still “shine
like a jewel” even if it were “completely powerless to carry out its aims” (G 4:394).
In Kant’s terms, a good will is a will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or, as he often
refers to this, by the Moral Law. Human beings inevitably feel this Law as a constraint on their natural desires,
which is why such Laws, as applied to human beings, are imperatives and duties. A human will in which the
Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of duty. A holy or divine will, if it exists, though good, would
not be good because it is motivated by thoughts of duty because such a will does not have natural inclinations
and so necessarily fulfills moral requirements without feeling constrained to do so. It is the presence of desires
that could operate independently of moral demands that makes goodness in human beings a constraint, an
essential element of the idea of “duty.” So in analyzing unqualified goodness as it occurs in imperfectly rational
creatures such as ourselves, we are investigating the idea of being motivated by the thought that we are
constrained to act in certain ways that we might not want to simply from the thought that we are morally
required to do so.
Kant confirms this by comparing motivation by duty with other sorts of motives, in particular, with motives of
self-interest, self-preservation, sympathy and happiness. He argues that a dutiful action from any of these
motives, however praiseworthy it may be, does not express a good will. Assuming an action has moral worth
only if it expresses a good will, such actions have no genuine “moral worth.” The conformity of one’s action to
duty in such cases is only related by accident to morality. For instance, if one is motivated by happiness alone,
then had conditions not conspired to align one’s duty with one’s own happiness one would not have done one’s
duty. By contrast, were one to supplant any of these motivations with the motive of duty, the morality of the
action would then express one’s determination to act dutifully out of respect for the moral law itself. Only then
would the action have moral worth.
Kant’s views in this regard have understandably been the subject of much controversy. Many object that we do
not think better of actions done for the sake of duty than actions performed out of emotional concern or
sympathy for others, especially those things we do for friends and family. Worse, moral worth appears to require
not only that one’s actions be motivated by duty, but also that no other motives, even love or friendship,
cooperate. Yet Kant’s defenders have argued that his point is not that we do not admire or praise motivating
concerns other than duty, only that from the point of view of someone deliberating about what to do, these
concerns are not decisive in the way that considerations of moral duty are. What is crucial in actions that express
a good will is that in conforming to duty a perfectly virtuous person always would, and so ideally we should,
recognize and be moved by the thought that our conformity is morally obligatory. The motivational structure of
the agent should be arranged so that she always treats considerations of duty as sufficient reasons for conforming
to those requirements. In other words, we should have a firm commitment not to perform an action if it is
morally forbidden and to perform an action if it is morally required. Having a good will, in this sense, is
compatible with having feelings and emotions of various kinds, and even with aiming to cultivate some of them
in order to counteract desires and inclinations that tempt us to immorality. Controversy persists, however, about
whether Kant’s claims about the motive of duty go beyond this basic point (Timmermann 2007; Herman 1993;
Wood 1998; Baron 1995).
Suppose for the sake of argument we agree with Kant. We now need to know what distinguishes the principle
that lays down our duties from these other motivating principles, and so makes motivation by it the source of
unqualified value.
3. Duty and Respect for Moral Law
According to Kant, what is singular about motivation by duty is that it consists of bare respect for the moral law.
What naturally comes to mind is this: Duties are rules or laws of some sort combined with some sort of felt
constraint or incentive on our choices, whether from external coercion by others or from our own powers of
reason. For instance, the bylaws of a club lay down duties for its officers and enforce them with sanctions. City
and state laws establish the duties of citizens and enforce them with coercive legal power. Thus, if we do
something because it is our “civic” duty, or our duty “as a boy scout” or “a good American,” our motivation is
respect for the code that makes it our duty. Thinking we are duty bound is simply respecting, as such, certain
laws pertaining to us.
However intuitive, this cannot be all of Kant’s meaning. For one thing, as with the Jim Crow laws of the old
South and the Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany, the laws to which these types of “actions from duty” conform
may be morally despicable. Respect for such laws could hardly be thought valuable. For another, our motive in
conforming our actions to civic and other laws is rarely unconditional respect. We also have an eye toward doing
our part in maintaining civil or social order, toward punishments or loss of standing and reputation in violating
such laws, and other outcomes of lawful behavior. Indeed, we respect these laws to the degree, but only to the
degree, that they do not violate values, laws or principles we hold more dear. Yet Kant thinks that, in acting from
duty, we are not at all motivated by a prospective outcome or some other extrinsic feature of our conduct except
insofar as these are requirements of duty itself. We are motivated by the mere conformity of our will to law as
such.
To act out of respect for the moral law, in Kant’s view, is to be moved to act by a recognition that the moral law
is a supremely authoritative standard that binds us and to experience a kind of feeling, which is akin to awe and
fear, when we acknowledge the moral law as the source of moral requirements. Human persons inevitably have
respect for the moral law even though we are not always moved by it and even though we do not always comply
with the moral standards that we nonetheless recognize as authoritative.
Kant’s account of the content of moral requirements and the nature of moral reasoning is based on his analysis of
the unique force moral considerations have as reasons to act. The force of moral requirements as reasons is that
we cannot ignore them no matter how circumstances might conspire against any other consideration. Basic
moral requirements retain their reason-giving force under any circumstance, they have universal validity. So,
whatever else may be said of basic moral requirements, their content is universal. Only a universal law could be
the content of a requirement that has the reason-giving force of morality. This brings Kant to a preliminary
formulation of the CI: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should
become a universal law” (G 4:402). This is the principle which motivates a good will, and which Kant holds to
be the fundamental principle of all of morality.
4. Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives
Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative. It is an imperative
because it is a command addressed to agents who could follow it but might not (e.g. , “Leave the gun. Take the
cannoli.”). It is categorical in virtue of applying to us unconditionally, or simply because we possesses rational
wills, without reference to any ends that we might or might not have. It does not, in other words, apply to us on
the condition that we have antecedently adopted some goal for ourselves.
There are “oughts” other than our moral duties, according to Kant, but these oughts are distinguished from the
moral ought in being based on a quite different kind of principle, one that is the source of hypothetical
imperatives. A hypothetical imperative is a command that also applies to us in virtue of our having a rational
will, but not simply in virtue of this. It requires us to exercise our wills in a certain way given we have
antecedently willed an end. A hypothetical imperative is thus a command in a conditional form. But not any
command in this form counts as a hypothetical imperative in Kant’s sense. For instance, “if you’re happy and
you know it, clap your hands!” is a conditional command. But the antecedent conditions under which the
command “clap your hands” applies to you do not posit any end that you will, but consist rather of emotional
and cognitive states you may or may not be in. Further, “if you want pastrami, try the corner deli” is also a
command in conditional form, but strictly speaking it too fails to be a hypothetical imperative in Kant’s sense
since this command does not apply to us in virtue of our willing some end, but only in virtue of our desiring or
wanting an end. For Kant, willing an end involves more than desiring; it requires actively choosing or
committing to the end rather than merely finding oneself with a passive desire for it. Further, there is nothing
irrational in failing to will means to what one desires. An imperative that applied to us in virtue of our desiring
some end would thus not be a hypothetical imperative of practical rationality in Kant’s sense.
The condition under which a hypothetical imperative applies to us, then, is that we will some end. Now, for the
most part, the ends we will we might not have willed, and some ends that we do not will we might nevertheless
have willed. But there is at least conceptual room for the idea of a natural or inclination-based end that we must
will. The distinction between ends that we might or might not will and those, if any, we necessarily will as the
kinds of natural beings we are, is the basis for his distinction between two kinds of hypothetical imperatives.
Kant names these “problematic” and “assertoric”, based on how the end is willed. If the end is one that we might
or might not will — that is, it is a merely possible end — the imperative is problematic. For instance, “Don’t
ever take side with anyone against the Family.” is a problematic imperative, even if the end posited here is
(apparently) one’s own continued existence. Almost all non-moral, rational imperatives are problematic, since
there are virtually no ends that we necessarily will as human beings.
As it turns out, the only (non-moral) end that we will, as a matter of natural necessity, is our own happiness. Any
imperative that applied to us because we will our own happiness would thus be an assertoric imperative.
Rationality, Kant thinks, can issue no imperative if the end is indeterminate, and happiness is an indeterminate
end. Although we can say for the most part that if one is to be happy, one should save for the future, take care of
one’s health and nourish one’s relationships, these fail to be genuine commands in the strictest sense and so are
instead mere “counsels.” Some people are happy without these, and whether you could be happy without them
is, although doubtful, an open question.
Since Kant presents moral and prudential rational requirements as first and foremost demands on our wills rather
than on external acts, moral and prudential evaluation is first and foremost an evaluation of the will our actions
express. Thus, it is not an error of rationality to fail to take the necessary means to one’s (willed) ends, nor to fail
to want to take the means; one only falls foul of non-moral practical reason if one fails to will the means.
Likewise, while actions, feelings or desires may be the focus of other moral views, for Kant practical
irrationality, both moral and prudential, focuses mainly on our willing.
One recent interpretive dispute (Hill 1973; Schroeder 2009; Rippon 2014) has been about whether hypothetical
imperatives, in Kant’s view, have a “wide” or “narrow” scope. That is, do such imperatives tell us to take the
necessary means to our ends or give up our ends (wide scope) or do they simply tell us that, if we have an end,
then take the necessary means to it.
Kant describes the will as operating on the basis of subjective volitional principles he calls “maxims”. Hence,
morality and other rational requirements are, for the most part, demands that apply to the maxims that we act on.
. The form of a maxim is “I will A in C in order to realize or produce E” where “A” is some act type, “C” is some
type of circumstance, and “E” is some type of end to be realized or achieved by A in C. Since this is a principle
stating only what some agent wills, it is subjective. (A principle that governs any rational will is an objective
principle of volition, which Kant refers to as a practical law). For anything to count as human willing, it must be
based on a maxim to pursue some end through some means. Hence, in employing a maxim, any human willing
already embodies the form of means-end reasoning that calls for evaluation in terms of hypothetical imperatives.
To that extent at least, then, anything dignified as human willing is subject to rational requirements.
5. The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature
Kant’s first formulation of the CI states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which
you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (G 4:421). O’Neill (1975, 1989) and Rawls (1980,
1989), among others, take this formulation in effect to summarize a decision procedure for moral reasoning, and
we will follow their basic outline: First, formulate a maxim that enshrines your reason for acting as you propose.
Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all
must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances. Third, consider whether your
maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this law of nature. If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether
you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is
morally permissible.
If your maxim fails the third step, you have a “perfect” duty admitting “of no exception in favor of inclination”
to refrain from acting on that maxim (G 4:421). If your maxim fails the fourth step, you have an “imperfect”
duty requiring you to pursue a policy that can admit of such exceptions. If your maxim passes all four steps, only
then is acting on it morally permissible. Following Hill (1971), we can understand the difference in duties as
formal: Perfect duties come in the form “One must never (or always) φ to the fullest extent possible in C”, while
imperfect duties, since they require us to adopt an end, at least require that “One must sometimes and to some
extent φ in C.” So, for instance, Kant held that the maxim of committing suicide to avoid future unhappiness did
not pass the third step, the contradiction in conception test. Hence, one is forbidden to act on the maxim of
committing suicide to avoid unhappiness. By contrast, the maxim of refusing to assist others in pursuit of their
projects passes the contradiction in conception test, but fails the contradiction in the will test at the fourth step.
Hence, we have a duty to sometimes and to some extent aid and assist others.
Kant held that ordinary moral thought recognized moral duties toward ourselves as well as toward others.
Hence, together with the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, Kant recognized four categories of
duties: perfect duties toward ourselves, perfect duties toward others, imperfect duties toward ourselves and
imperfect duties toward others. Kant uses four examples in the Groundwork, one of each kind of duty, to
demonstrate that every kind of duty can be derived from the CI, and hence to bolster his case that the CI is
indeed the fundamental principle of morality. To refrain from suicide is a perfect duty toward oneself; to refrain
from making promises you have no intention of keeping is a perfect duty toward others; to develop one’s talents
is an imperfect duty toward oneself; and to contribute to the happiness of others is an imperfect duty toward
others. Again, Kant’s interpreters differ over exactly how to reconstruct the derivation of these duties. We will
briefly sketch one way of doing so for the perfect duty to others to refrain from lying promises and the imperfect
duty to ourselves to develop talents.
Kant’s example of a perfect duty to others concerns a promise you might consider making but have no intention
of keeping in order to get needed money. Naturally, being rational requires not contradicting oneself, but there is
no self-contradiction in the maxim “I will make lying promises when it achieves something I want.” An immoral
action clearly does not involve a self-contradiction in this sense (as would the maxim of finding a married
bachelor). Kant’s position is that it is irrational to perform an action if that action’s maxim contradicts itself once
made into a universal law of nature. The maxim of lying whenever it gets you what you want generates a
contradiction once you try to combine it with the universalized version that all rational agents must, by a law of
nature, lie when doing so gets them what they want.
Here is one way of seeing how this might work: If I conceive of a world in which everyone by nature must try to
deceive people any time this will get them what they want, I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of
giving one’s word could ever arise and, because this is a law of nature, we can assume that it is widely known
that no such practice could exist. So I am conceiving of a world in which everyone knows that no practice of
giving one’s word exists. My maxim, however, is to make a deceptive promise in order to get needed money.
And it is a necessary means of doing this that a practice of taking the word of others exists, so that someone
might take my word and I take advantage of their doing so. Thus, in trying to conceive of my maxim in a world
in which no one ever takes anyone’s word in such circumstances, and knows this about one another, I am trying
to conceive of this: A world in which no practice of giving one’s word exists, but also, at the very same time, a
world in which just such a practice does exist, for me to make use of in my maxim. It is a world containing my
promise and a world in which there can be no promises. Hence, it is inconceivable that I could sincerely act on
my maxim in a world in which my maxim is a universal law of nature. Since it is inconceivable that these two
things could exist together, I am forbidden ever to act on the maxim of lying to get money.
By contrast with the maxim of the lying promise, we can easily conceive of adopting a maxim of refusing to
develop any of our talents in a world in which that maxim is a universal law of nature. It would undoubtedly be a
world more primitive than our own, but pursuing such a policy is still conceivable in it. However, it is not, Kant
argues, possible to rationally will this maxim in such a world. The argument for why this is so, however, is not
obvious, and some of Kant’s thinking seems hardly convincing: Insofar as we are rational, he says, we already
necessarily will that all of our talents and abilities be developed. Hence, although I can conceive of a talentless
world, I cannot rationally will that it come about, given that I already will, insofar as I am rational, that I develop
all of my own. Yet, given limitations on our time, energy and interest, it is difficult to see how full rationality
requires us to aim to fully develop literally all of our talents. Indeed, it seems to require much less, a judicious
picking and choosing among one’s abilities. Further, all that is required to show that I cannot will a talentless
world is that, insofar as I am rational, I necessarily will that some talents in me be developed, not the dubious
claim that I rationally will that they all be developed. Moreover, suppose rationality did require me to aim at
developing all of my talents. Then, there seems to be no need to go further in the CI procedure to show that
refusing to develop talents is immoral. Given that, insofar as we are rational, we must will to develop capacities,
it is by this very fact irrational not to do so.
However, mere failure to conform to something we rationally will is not yet immorality. Failure to conform to
instrumental principles, for instance, is irrational but not always immoral. In order to show that this maxim is
categorically forbidden, one strategy is to make use of several other of Kant’s claims or assumptions.
First, we must accept Kant’s claim that, by “natural necessity,” we will our own happiness as an end (G 4:415).
This is a claim he uses not only to distinguish assertoric from problematic imperatives, but also to argue for the
imperfect duty of helping others (G 4:423) He also appears to rely on this claim in each of his examples. Each
maxim he is testing appears to have happiness as its aim. One explanation for this is that, since each person
necessarily wills her own happiness, maxims in pursuit of this goal will be the typical object of moral
evaluation. This, at any rate, is clear in the talents example itself: The forbidden maxim adopted by the ne’er-do-
well is supposed to be “devoting his life solely to…enjoyment” (G 4:423) rather than to developing his talents.
Second, we must assume, as also seems reasonable, that a necessary means to achieving (normal) human
happiness is not only that we ourselves develop some talent, but also that others develop some capacities of
theirs at some time. For instance, I cannot engage in the normal pursuits that make up my own happiness, such
as playing piano, writing philosophy or eating delicious meals, unless I have developed some talents myself,
and, moreover, someone else has made pianos and written music, taught me writing, harvested foods and
developed traditions of their preparation.
Finally, Kant’s examples come on the heels of defending the position that rationality requires conformity to
hypothetical imperatives. Thus, we should assume that, necessarily, rational agents will the necessary and
available means to any ends that they will. And once we add this to the assumptions that we must will our own
happiness as an end, and that developed talents are necessary means to achieving that end, it follows that we
cannot rationally will that a world come about in which it is a law that no one ever develops any of their natural
talents. We cannot do so, because our own happiness is the very end contained in the maxim of giving ourselves
over to pleasure rather than self-development. Since we will the necessary and available means to our ends, we
are rationally committed to willing that everyone sometime develop his or her talents. So since we cannot will as
a universal law of nature that no one ever develop any talents — given that it is inconsistent with what we now
see that we rationally will — we are forbidden from adopting the maxim of refusing to develop any of our own.
6. The Humanity Formula
Most philosophers who find Kant’s views attractive find them so because of the Humanity Formulation of the
CI. This formulation states that we should never act in such a way that we treat humanity, whether in ourselves
or in others, as a means only but always as an end in itself. This is often seen as introducing the idea of “respect”
for persons, for whatever it is that is essential to our humanity. Kant was clearly right that this and the other
formulations bring the CI “closer to intuition” than the Universal Law formula. Intuitively, there seems
something wrong with treating human beings as mere instruments with no value beyond this. But this very
intuitiveness can also invite misunderstandings.
First, the Humanity Formula does not rule out using people as means to our ends. Clearly this would be an
absurd demand, since we apparently do this all the time in morally appropriate ways. Indeed, it is hard to
imagine any life that is recognizably human without the use of others in pursuit of our goals. The food we eat,
the clothes we wear, the chairs we sit on and the computers we type at are gotten only by way of talents and
abilities that have been developed through the exercise of the wills of many people. What the Humanity Formula
rules out is engaging in this pervasive use of humanity in such a way that we treat it as a mere means to our
ends. Thus, the difference between a horse and a taxi driver is not that we may use one but not the other as a
means of transportation. Unlike a horse, the taxi driver’s humanity must at the same time be treated as an end in
itself.
Second, it is not human beings per se but the “humanity” in human beings that we must treat as an end in itself.
Our “humanity” is that collection of features that make us distinctively human, and these include capacities to
engage in self-directed rational behavior and to adopt and pursue our own ends, and any other rational capacities
necessarily connected with these. Thus, supposing that the taxi driver has freely exercised his rational capacities
in pursuing his line of work, we make permissible use of these capacities as a means only if we behave in a way
that he could, when exercising his rational capacities, consent to — for instance, by paying an agreed on price.
Third, the idea of an end has three senses for Kant, two positive senses and a negative sense. An end in the first
positive sense is a thing we will to produce or bring about in the world. For instance, if losing weight is my end,
then losing weight is something I aim to bring about. An end in this sense guides my actions in that once I will
to produce something, I then deliberate about and aim to pursue means of producing it if I am rational. Humanity
is not an “end” in this sense, though even in this case, the end “lays down a law” for me. Once I have adopted an
end in this sense, it dictates that I do something: I should act in ways that will bring about the end or instead
choose to abandon my goal.
An end in the negative sense lays down a law for me as well, and so guides action, but in a different way.
Korsgaard (1996) offers self-preservation as an example of an end in a negative sense: We do not try to produce
our self-preservation. Rather, the end of self-preservation prevents us from engaging in certain kinds of
activities, for instance, picking fights with mobsters, and so on. That is, as an end, it is something I do not act
against in pursuing my positive ends, rather than something I produce.
Humanity is in the first instance an end in this negative sense: It is something that limits what I may do in pursuit
of my other ends, similar to the way that my end of self-preservation limits what I may do in pursuit of other
ends. Insofar as it limits my actions, it is a source of perfect duties. Now many of our ends are subjective in that
they are not ends that every rational being must have. Humanity is an objective end, because it is an end that
every rational being must have. Hence, my own humanity as well as the humanity of others limit what I am
morally permitted to do when I pursue my other, non-mandatory, ends.
The humanity in myself and others is also a positive end, though not in the first positive sense above, as
something to be produced by my actions. Rather, it is something to realize, cultivate or further by my actions.
Becoming a philosopher, pianist or novelist might be my end in this sense. When my end is becoming a pianist,
my actions do not, or at least not simply, produce something, being a pianist, but constitute or realize the activity
of being a pianist. Insofar as the humanity in ourselves must be treated as an end in itself in this second positive
sense, it must be cultivated, developed or fully actualized. Hence, the humanity in oneself is the source of a duty
to develop one’s talents or to “perfect” one’s humanity. When one makes one’s own humanity one’s end, one
pursues its development, much as when one makes becoming a pianist one’s end, one pursues the development
of piano playing. And insofar as humanity is a positive end in others, I must attempt to further their ends as well.
In so doing, I further the humanity in others, by helping further the projects and ends that they have willingly
adopted for themselves. It is this sense of humanity as an end-in-itself on which some of Kant’s arguments for
imperfect duties rely.
Finally, Kant’s Humanity Formula requires “respect” for the humanity in persons. Proper regard for something
with absolute value or worth requires respect for it. But this can invite misunderstandings. One way in which we
respect persons, termed “appraisal respect” by Stephen Darwall (1977), is clearly not the same as the kind of
respect required by the Humanity Formula: I may respect you as a rebounder but not a scorer, or as a researcher
but not as a teacher. When I respect you in this way, I am positively appraising you in light of some achievement
or virtue you possess relative to some standard of success. If this were the sort of respect Kant is counseling then
clearly it may vary from person to person and is surely not what treating something as an end-in-itself requires.
For instance, it does not seem to prevent me from regarding rationality as an achievement and respecting one
person as a rational agent in this sense, but not another. And Kant is not telling us to ignore differences, to
pretend that we are blind to them on mindless egalitarian grounds. However, a distinct way in which we respect
persons, referred to as “recognition respect” by Darwall, better captures Kant’s position: I may respect you
because you are a student, a Dean, a doctor or a mother. In such cases of respecting you because of who or what
you are, I am giving the proper regard to a certain fact about you, your being a Dean for instance. This sort of
respect, unlike appraisal respect, is not a matter of degree based on your having measured up to some standard of
assessment. Respect for the humanity in persons is more like Darwall’s recognition respect. We are to respect
human beings simply because they are persons and this requires a certain sort of regard. We are not called on to
respect them insofar as they have met some standard of evaluation appropriate to persons. And, crucially for
Kant, persons cannot lose their humanity by their misdeeds – even the most vicious persons, Kant thought,
deserve basic respect as persons with humanity.
7. The Autonomy Formula
The third formulation of the CI is “the Idea of the will of every rational being as a will that legislates universal
law.” (G 4:432). Although Kant does not state this as an imperative, as he does in the other formulations, it is
easy enough to put it in that form: Act so that through your maxims you could be a legislator of universal laws.
This sounds very similar to the first formulation. However, in this case we focus on our status as universal law
givers rather than universal law followers. This is of course the source of the very dignity of humanity Kant
speaks of in the second formulation. A rational will that is merely bound by universal laws could act accordingly
from natural and non-moral motives, such as self-interest. But in order to be a legislator of universal laws, such
contingent motives, motives that rational agents such as ourselves may or may not have, must be set aside.
Hence, we are required, according to this formulation, to conform our behavior to principles that express this
autonomy of the rational will — its status as a source of the very universal laws that obligate it. As with the
Humanity Formula, this new formulation of the CI does not change the outcome, since each is supposed to
formulate the very same moral law, and in some sense “unite” the other formulations within it. Kant takes each
formulation that succeeds the first in its own way as bringing the moral law “closer to feeling”. The Autonomy
Formula presumably does this by putting on display the source of our dignity and worth, our status as free
rational agents who are the source of the authority behind the very moral laws that bind us.
8. The Kingdom of Ends Formula
This formulation has gained favor among Kantians in recent years (see Rawls, 1971; Hill, 1972). Many see it as
introducing more of a social dimension to Kantian morality. Kant states that the above concept of every rational
will as a will that must regard itself as enacting laws binding all rational wills is closely connected to another
concept, that of a “systematic union of different rational beings under common laws”, or a “Kingdom of Ends”
(G 4:433). The formulation of the CI states that we must “act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving
universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends” (G 4:439). It combines the others in that (i) it requires
that we conform our actions to the laws of an ideal moral legislature, (ii) that this legislature lays down universal
laws, binding all rational wills including our own, and (iii) that those laws are of “a merely possible kingdom”
each of whose members equally possesses this status as legislator of universal laws, and hence must be treated
always as an end in itself. The intuitive idea behind this formulation is that our fundamental moral obligation is
to act only on principles which could earn acceptance by a community of fully rational agents each of whom
have an equal share in legislating these principles for their community.
9. The Unity of the Formulas
Kant claimed that all of these CI formulas were equivalent. Unfortunately, he does not say in what sense. What
he says is that these “are basically only so many formulations of precisely the same law, each one of them by
itself uniting the other two within it,” and that the differences between them are “more subjectively than
objectively practical” in the sense that each aims “to bring an Idea of reason closer to intuition (by means of a
certain analogy) and thus nearer to feeling” (G 4:435). He also says that one formula “follows from” another (G
4:431), and that the concept foundational to one formula “leads to a closely connected” concept at the basis of
another formula (G 4:433). Thus, his claim that the formulations are equivalent could be interpreted in a number
of ways.
Kant’s statement that each formula “unites the other two within it” initially suggests that the formulas are
equivalent in meaning, or at least one could analytically derive one formula from another. Some of Kant’s
commentators, for example, have argued along the following lines: That I should always treat humanity as an
end in itself entails that I should act only on maxims that are consistent with themselves as universal laws of
nature (O’Neill 1975, 1990; Engstrom 2009; Sensen 2011). There are remaining doubts some commentators
have, however, about whether this strategy can capture the full meaning of the Humanity Formula or explain all
of the duties that Kant claims to derive from it (Wood 1999, 2007; Cureton 2013).
Perhaps, then, if the formulas are not equivalent in meaning, they are nevertheless logically interderivable and
hence equivalent in this sense. The universal law formula is not itself derived, as some of Kant’s interpreters
have suggested, from the principle of non-contradiction. That would have the consequence that the CI is a
logical truth, and Kant insists that it is not or at least that it is not analytic. Since the CI formulas are not logical
truths, then, it is possible that they could be logically interderivable. However, despite his claim that each
contains the others within it, what we find in the Groundwork seems best interpreted as a derivation of each
successive formula from the immediately preceding formula. There are, nonetheless, a few places in which it
seems that Kant is trying to work in the opposite direction. One is found in his discussion of the Humanity
Formula. There Kant says that only something “whose existence in itself had an absolute worth” could be the
ground of a categorically binding law (G 4:428). He then boldly proclaims that humanity is this absolutely
valuable thing, referring to this as a “postulate” that he will argue for in the final chapter of the Groundwork (G
4:429n). One might take this as expressing Kant’s intention to derive thereby the universal law formula from the
Humanity Formula: If something is absolutely valuable, then we must act only on maxims that can be universal
laws. But (he postulates) humanity is absolutely valuable. Thus, we must act only on maxims that can be
universal laws. This (we think) anomolous discussion may well get at some deep sense in which Kant thought
the formulations were equivalent. Nonetheless, this derivation of the universal law formulation from the
Humanity Formulation seems to require a substantive, synthetic claim, namely, that humanity is indeed
absolutely valuable. And if it does require this, then, contrary to Kant’s own insistence, the argument of
Groundwork II does not appear to be merely an analytic argument meant simply to establish the content of the
moral law.
The most straightforward interpretation of the claim that the formulas are equivalent is as the claim that
following or applying each formula would generate all and only the same duties (Allison 2011). This seems to
be supported by the fact that Kant used the same examples through the Law of Nature Formula and the
Humanity Formula. Thus, the Universal Law Formulation generates a duty to φ if and only if the Humanity
Formula generates a duty to φ, (and so on for the other formulations). In other words, respect for humanity as an
end in itself could never lead you to act on maxims that would generate a contradiction when universalized, and
vice versa. This way of understanding Kant’s claim also fits with his statement that there is no “objective
practical difference” between the formulations although there are “subjective” differences. The subjective
differences between formulas are presumably differences that appeal in different ways to various conceptions of
what morality demands of us. But this difference in meaning is compatible with there being no practical
difference, in the sense that conformity to one formulation cannot lead one to violate another formulation.
10. Autonomy
At the heart of Kant’s moral theory is the idea of autonomy. Most readers interpret Kant as holding that
autonomy is a property of rational wills or agents. Understanding the idea of autonomy was, in Kant’s view, key
to understanding and justifying the authority that moral requirements have over us. As with Rousseau, whose
views influenced Kant, freedom does not consist in being bound by no law, but by laws that are in some sense of
one’s own making. The idea of freedom as autonomy thus goes beyond the merely “negative” sense of being
free from causes on our conduct originating outside of ourselves. It contains first and foremost the idea of laws
made and laid down by oneself, and, in virtue of this, laws that have decisive authority over oneself.
Kant’s basic idea can be grasped intuitively by analogy with the idea of political freedom as autonomy (See
Reath 1994). Consider how political freedom in liberal theories is thought to be related to legitimate political
authority: A state is free when its citizens are bound only by laws in some sense of their own making — created
and put into effect, say, by vote or by elected representatives. The laws of that state then express the will of the
citizens who are bound by them. The idea, then, is that the source of legitimate political authority is not external
to its citizens, but internal to them, internal to “the will of the people.” It is because the body politic created and
enacted these laws for itself that it can be bound by them. An autonomous state is thus one in which the
authority of its laws is in the will of the people in that state, rather than in the will of a people external to that
state, as when one state imposes laws on another during occupation or colonization. In the latter case, the laws
have no legitimate authority over those citizens. In a similar fashion, we may think of a person as free when
bound only by her own will and not by the will of another. Her actions then express her own will and not the will
of someone or something else. The authority of the principles binding her will is then also not external to her
will. It comes from the fact that she willed them. So autonomy, when applied to an individual, ensures that the
source of the authority of the principles that bind her is in her own will. Kant’s view can be seen as the view that
the moral law is just such a principle. Hence, the “moral legitimacy” of the CI is grounded in its being an
expression of each person’s own rational will. It is because each person’s own reason is the legislator and
executor of the moral law that it is authoritative for her. (For a contrasting interpretation of autonomy that
emphasizes the intrinsic value of freedom of choice and the instrumental role of reason in preserving that value,
see Guyer 2007).
Kant argues that the idea of an autonomous will emerges from a consideration of the idea of a will that is free “in
a negative sense.” The concept of a rational will is of a will that operates by responding to what it takes to be
reasons. This is, firstly, the concept of a will that does not operate through the influence of factors outside of this
responsiveness to apparent reasons. For a will to be free is thus for it to be physically and psychologically
unforced in its operation. Hence, behaviors that are performed because of obsessions or thought disorders are not
free in this negative sense. But also, for Kant, a will that operates by being determined through the operation of
natural laws, such as those of biology or psychology, cannot be thought of as operating by responding to reasons.
Hence, determination by natural laws is conceptually incompatible with being free in a negative sense.
A crucial move in Kant’s argument is his claim that a rational will cannot act except “under the Idea” of its own
freedom (G 4:448). The expression “acting under the Idea of freedom” is easy to misunderstand. It does not
mean that a rational will must believe it is free, since determinists are as free as libertarians in Kant’s view.
Indeed, Kant goes out of his way in his most famous work, the Critique of Pure Reason, to argue that we have
no rational basis for believing our wills to be free. This would involve, he argues, attributing a property to our
wills that they would have to have as ‘things in themselves’ apart from the causally determined world of
appearances. Of such things, he insists, we can have no knowledge. For much the same reason, Kant is not
claiming that a rational will cannot operate without feeling free. Feelings, even the feeling of operating freely or
the “looseness” Hume refers to when we act, cannot be used in an a priori argument to establish the CI, since
they are empirical data.
One helpful way to understand acting “under the Idea of freedom” is by analogy with acting “under the Idea”
that there are purposes in nature: Although there is, according to Kant, no rational basis for the belief that the
natural world is (or is not) arranged according to some purpose by a Designer, the actual practices of science
often require looking for the purpose of this or that chemical, organ, creature, environment, and so on. Thus, one
engages in these natural sciences by searching for purposes in nature. Yet when an evolutionary biologist, for
instance, looks for the purpose of some organ in some creature, she does not after all thereby believe that the
creature was designed that way, for instance, by a Deity. Nor is she having some feeling of “designedness” in the
creature. To say that she “acts under the Idea of” design is to say something about the practice of biology:
Practicing biology involves searching for the purposes of the parts of living organisms. In much the same way,
although there is no rational justification for the belief that our wills are (or are not) free, the actual practice of
practical deliberation and decision consists of a search for the right casual chain of which to be the origin —
consists, that is, seeking to be the first causes of things, wholly and completely through the exercise of one’s
own will.
Kant says that a will that cannot exercise itself except under the Idea of its freedom is free from a practical point
of view (im practischer Absicht). In saying such wills are free from a practical point of view, he is saying that in
engaging in practical endeavors — trying to decide what to do, what to hold oneself and others responsible for,
and so on — one is justified in holding oneself to all of the principles to which one would be justified in holding
wills that are autonomous free wills. Thus, once we have established the set of prescriptions, rules, laws and
directives that would bind an autonomous free will, we then hold ourselves to this very same of set prescriptions,
rules, laws and directives. And one is justified in this because rational agency can only operate by seeking to be
the first cause of its actions, and these are the prescriptions, and so on, of being a first cause of action. Therefore,
rational agents are free in a negative sense insofar as any practical matter is at issue.
Crucially, rational wills that are negatively free must be autonomous, or so Kant argues. This is because the will
is a kind of cause—willing causes action. Kant took from Hume the idea that causation implies universal
regularities: if x causes y, then there is some universally valid law connecting Xs to Ys. So, if my will is the cause
of my φing, then Φing is connected to the sort of willing I engage in by some universal law. But it can’t be a
natural law, such as a psychological, physical, chemical or biological law. These laws, which Kant thought were
universal too, govern the movements of my body, the workings of my brain and nervous system and the
operation of my environment and its effects on me as a material being. But they cannot be the laws governing
the operation of my will; that, Kant already argued, is inconsistent with the freedom of my will in a negative
sense. So, the will operates according to a universal law, though not one authored by nature, but one of which I
am the origin or author. And that is to say that, in viewing my willing to φ as a negatively free cause of my φing,
I must view my will as the autonomous cause of my having φed, as causing my having φed by way of some law
that I, insofar as I am a rational will, laid down for my will.
Thus, Kant argues, a rational will, insofar as it is rational, is a will conforming itself to those laws valid for any
rational will. Addressed to imperfectly rational wills, such as our own, this becomes an imperative: “Conform
your action to a universal non-natural law.” Kant assumed that there was some connection between this formal
requirement and the formulation of the CI which enjoins us to “Act as though the maxim of your action were to
become by your will a universal law of nature.” But, as commentators have long noticed (see, e.g. , Hill, 1989a,
1989b), it is not clear what the link is between the claim that rational autonomous wills conform themselves to
whatever universally valid laws require, and the more substantial and controversial claim that you should
evaluate your maxims in the ways implied by the universal law of nature formulation.
Kant appeared not to recognize the gap between the law of an autonomous rational will and the CI, but he was
apparently unsatisfied with the argument establishing the CI in Groundwork III for another reason, namely, the
fact that it does not prove that we really are free. In the Critique of Practical Reason, he states that it is simply a
“fact of reason” (Factum der Vernunft) that our wills are bound by the CI, and he uses this to argue that our wills
are autonomous. Hence, while in the Groundwork Kant relies on a dubious argument for our autonomy to
establish that we are bound by the moral law, in the second Critique, he argues from the bold assertion of our
being bound by the moral law to our autonomy.
The apparent failure of Kant’s argument to establish the autonomy of the will, and hence the authority of moral
demands over us, has not deterred his followers from trying to make good on this project. One strategy favored
recently has been to turn back to the arguments of Groundwork II for help. Kant himself repeatedly claimed that
these arguments are merely analytic but that they do not establish that there is anything that answers to the
concepts he analyzes. The conclusions are thus fully compatible with morality being, as he puts it, a “mere
phantom of the brain” (G 4:445). Kant clearly takes himself to have established that rational agents such as
ourselves must take the means to our ends, since this is analytic of rational agency. But there is a chasm between
this analytic claim and the supposed synthetic conclusion that rational agency also requires conforming to a
further, non-desire based, principle of practical reason such as the CI. Nevertheless, some see arguments in
Groundwork II that establish just this. These strategies involve a new “teleological” reading of Kant’s ethics that
relies on establishing the existence of an absolute value or an “end in itself” (we say more about this teleological
reading below). They begin with Kant’s own stated assumption that there is such an end in itself if and only if
there is a categorical imperative binding on all rational agents as such. If this assumption is true, then if one can
on independent grounds prove that there is something which is an end in itself, one will have an argument for a
categorical imperative. One such strategy, favored by Korsgaard (1996) and Wood (1999) relies on the apparent
argument Kant gives that humanity is an end in itself. Guyer, by contrast, sees an argument for freedom as an
end in itself (Guyer 2000). Both strategies have faced textual and philosophical hurdles. Considerable
interpretive finesse, for instance, is required to explain Kant’s stark insistence on the priority of principles and
law over the good in the second Critique (CPrR 5:57–67)
Although most of Kant’s readers understand the property of autonomy as being a property of rational wills,
some, such as Thomas E. Hill, have held that Kant’s central idea is that of autonomy is a property, not primarily
of wills, but of principles. The core idea is that Kant believed that all moral theories prior to his own went astray
because they portrayed fundamental moral principles as appealing to the existing interests of those bound by
them. By contrast, in Kant’s view moral principles must not appeal to such interests, for no interest is necessarily
universal. Thus, in assuming at the outset that moral principles must embody some interest (or “heteronomous”
principles), such theories rule out the very possibility that morality is universally binding. By contrast, the
Categorical Imperative, because it does not enshrine existing interests, presumes that rational agents can
conform to a principle that does not appeal to their interests (or an “autonomous” principle), and so can fully
ground our conception, according to Kant, of what morality requires of us.
A different interpretive strategy, which has gained prominence in recent years, focuses on Kant’s apparent
identification, in Groundwork III, of the will and practical reason. One natural way of interpreting Kant’s
conception of freedom is to understand it in terms of the freedom and spontaneity of reason itself. This in turn
apparently implies that our wills are necessarily aimed at what is rational and reasonable. To will something, on
this picture, is to govern oneself in accordance with reason. Often, however, we fail to effectively so govern
ourselves because we are imperfect rational beings who are caused to act by our non–rational desires and
inclinations. The result, at least on one version of this interpretation (Wolff 1973), is that we either act rationally
and reasonably (and so autonomously) or we are merely caused to behave in certain ways by non–rational forces
acting on us (and so heteronomously). This is, however, an implausible view. It implies that all irrational acts,
and hence all immoral acts, are not willed and therefore not free. Most interpreters have denied that this is the
proper interpretation of Kant’s views. However, several prominent commentators nonetheless think that there is
some truth in it (Engstrom 2009; Reath 2015; Korsgaard 1996, 2008, 2009). They agree that we always act
under the “guise of the good” in the sense that our will is necessarily aimed at what is objectively and
subjectively rational and reasonable, but these interpreters also think that, for Kant, there is a middle–ground
between perfect conformity to reason and being caused to act by natural forces. In particular, when we act
immorally, we are either weak–willed or we are misusing our practical reason by willing badly. We do not have
the capacity to aim to act on an immoral maxim because the will is identified with practical reason, so when we
will to perform an immoral act, we implicitly but mistakenly take our underlying policy to be required by
reason. By representing our immoral act as rational and reasonable, we are not exercising our powers of reason
well, so we are simply making a “choice” that is contrary to reason without “willing” it as such. Our choice is
nonetheless free and attributable to us because our will was involved in leading us to take the act to be rational
and reasonable. It remains to be seen whether, on this complicated interpretation of Kant, it sufficiently allows
for the possibility that one can knowingly and willingly do wrong if the will is practical reason and practical
reason is, in part, the moral law.
11. Virtue and Vice
Kant defines virtue as “the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty” (MM 6:405) and vice as
principled immorality (MM 6:390). This definition appears to put Kant’s views on virtue at odds with classical
views such as Aristotle’s in several important respects.
First, Kant’s account of virtue presupposes an account of moral duty already in place. Thus, rather than treating
admirable character traits as more basic than the notions of right and wrong conduct, Kant takes virtues to be
explicable only in terms of a prior account of moral or dutiful behavior. He does not try to make out what shape
a good character has and then draw conclusions about how we ought to act on that basis. He sets out the
principles of moral conduct based on his philosophical account of rational agency, and then on that basis defines
virtue as a kind of strength and resolve to act on those principles despite temptations to the contrary.
Second, virtue is, for Kant, strength of will, and hence does not arise as the result of instilling a “second nature”
by a process of habituating or training ourselves to act and feel in particular ways. It is indeed a disposition, but
a disposition of one’s will, not a disposition of emotions, feelings, desires or any other feature of human nature
that might be amenable to habituation. Moreover, the disposition is to overcome obstacles to moral behavior that
Kant thought were ineradicable features of human nature. Thus, virtue appears to be much more like what
Aristotle would have thought of as a lesser trait, viz., continence or self-control.
Third, in viewing virtue as a trait grounded in moral principles, and vice as principled transgression of moral
law, Kant thought of himself as thoroughly rejecting what he took to be the Aristotelian view that virtue is a
mean between two vices. The Aristotelian view, he claimed, assumes that virtue typically differs from vice only
in terms of degree rather than in terms of the different principles each involves (MM 6:404, 432). Prodigality
and avarice, for instance, do not differ by being too loose or not loose enough with one’s means. They differ in
that the prodigal person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of enjoyment, while the
avaricious person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of possessing them.
Fourth, in classical views the distinction between moral and non-moral virtues is not particularly significant. A
virtue is some sort of excellence of the soul, but one finds classical theorists treating wit and friendliness
alongside courage and justice. Since Kant holds moral virtue to be a trait grounded in moral principle, the
boundary between non-moral and moral virtues could not be more sharp. Even so, Kant shows a remarkable
interest in non-moral virtues; indeed, much of Anthropology is given over to discussing the nature and sources of
a variety of character traits, both moral and non-moral.
Fifth, virtue cannot be a trait of divine beings, if there are such, since it is the power to overcome obstacles that
would not be present in them. This is not to say that to be virtuous is to be the victor in a constant and permanent
war with ineradicable evil impulses or temptations. Morality is “duty” for human beings because it is possible
(and we recognize that it is possible) for our desires and interests to run counter to its demands. Should all of our
desires and interests be trained ever so carefully to comport with what morality actually requires of us, this
would not change in the least the fact that morality is still duty for us. For should this come to pass, it would not
change the fact that each and every desire and interest could have run contrary to the moral law. And it is the fact
that they can conflict with moral law, not the fact that they actually do conflict with it, that makes duty a
constraint, and hence is virtue essentially a trait concerned with constraint.
Sixth, virtue, while important, does not hold pride of place in Kant’s system in other respects. For instance, he
holds that the lack of virtue is compatible with possessing a good will (G 6: 408). That one acts from duty, even
repeatedly and reliably can thus be quite compatible with an absence of the moral strength to overcome contrary
interests and desires. Indeed, it may often be no challenge at all to do one’s duty from duty alone. Someone with
a good will, who is genuinely committed to duty for its own sake, might simply fail to encounter any significant
temptation that would reveal the lack of strength to follow through with that commitment. That said, he also
appeared to hold that if an act is to be of genuine moral worth, it must be motivated by the kind of purity of
motivation achievable only through a permanent, quasi-religious conversion or “revolution” in the orientation of
the will of the sort described in Religion. Until one achieves a permanent change in the will’s orientation in this
respect, a revolution in which moral righteousness is the nonnegotiable condition of any of one’s pursuits, all of
one’s actions that are in accordance with duty are nevertheless morally worthless, no matter what else may be
said of them. However, even this revolution in the will must be followed up with a gradual, lifelong
strengthening of one’s will to put this revolution into practice. This suggests that Kant’s considered view is that a
good will is a will in which this revolution of priorities has been achieved, while a virtuous will is one with the
strength to overcome obstacles to its manifestation in practice.
Kant distinguishes between virtue, which is strength of will to do one’s duty from duty, and particular virtues,
which are commitments to particular moral ends that we are morally required to adopt. Among the virtues Kant
discusses are those of self-respect, honesty, thrift, self-improvement, beneficence, gratitude, sociability, and
forgiveness. Kant also distinguishes vice, which is a steadfast commitment to immorality, from particular vices,
which involve refusing to adopt specific moral ends or committing to act against those ends. For example,
malice, lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, vengefulness, envy, servility, contempt and arrogance are all vices in
Kant’s normative ethical theory.
(Interest in Kant’s conception of virtue has rapidly grown in recent years. For further discussion, see Cureton
and Hill 2014, forthcoming; Wood 2008; Surprenant 2014; Sherman 1997; O’Neil 1996; Johnson 2008; Hill
2012; Herman 1996; Engstrom 2002; Denis 2006; Cureton forthcoming; Betzler 2008; Baxley 2010).
12. Normative Ethical Theory
The Categorical Imperative, in Kant’s view, is an objective, unconditional and necessary principle of reason that
applies to all rational agents in all circumstances. Although Kant gives several examples in the Groundwork that
illustrate this principle, he goes on to describe in later writings, especially in The Metaphysics of Morals, a
complicated normative ethical theory for interpreting and applying the CI to human persons in the natural world.
His framework includes various levels, distinctions and application procedures. Kant, in particular, describes
two subsidiary principles that are supposed to capture different aspects of the CI. The Universal Principle of
Right, which governs issues about justice, rights and external acts that can be coercively enforced, holds that
“Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its
maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law”
(MM 6:230). The Supreme Principle of the Doctrine of Virtue, which governs questions about moral ends,
attitudes, and virtue, requires us to “act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for
everyone to have” (MM 6:395). These principles, in turn, justify more specific duties of right and of ethics and
virtue.
In Kant’s framework, duties of right are narrow and perfect because they require or forbid particular acts, while
duties of ethics and virtue are wide and imperfect because they allow significant latitude in how we may decide
to fulfill them. For example, Kant claims that the duty not to steal the property of another person is narrow and
perfect because it precisely defines a kind of act that is forbidden. The duty of beneficence, on the other hand, is
characterized as wide and imperfect because it does not specify exactly how much assistance we must provide to
others.
Even with a system of moral duties in place, Kant admits that judgment is often required to determine how these
duties apply to particular circumstances. Moral laws, Kant says, “must be meticulously observed” but “they
cannot, after all, have regard to every little circumstance, and the latter may yield exceptions, which do not
always find their exact resolution in the laws” (V 27:574; see also CPR A133/B172; MM 6:411).
13. Teleology or Deontology?
The received view is that Kant’s moral philosophy is a deontological normative theory at least to this extent: it
denies that right and wrong are in some way or other functions of goodness or badness. It denies, in other words,
the central claim of teleological moral views. For instance, act consequentialism is one sort of teleological
theory. It asserts that the right action is that action of all the alternatives available to the agent that has the best
overall outcome. Here, the goodness of the outcome determines the rightness of an action. Another sort of
teleological theory might focus instead on character traits. “Virtue ethics” asserts that a right action in any given
circumstance is that action a virtuous person does or would perform in those circumstances. In this case, it is the
goodness of the character of the person who does or would perform it that determines the rightness of an action.
In both cases, as it were, the source or ground of rightness is goodness. And Kant’s own views have typically
been classified as deontological precisely because they have seemed to reverse this priority and deny just what
such theories assert. Rightness, on the standard reading of Kant, is not grounded in the value of outcomes or
character.
There are several reasons why readers have thought that Kant denies the teleological thesis. First, he makes a
plethora of statements about outcomes and character traits that appear to imply an outright rejection of both
forms of teleology. For instance, in Groundwork I, he says that he takes himself to have argued that “the
objectives we may have in acting, and also our actions’ effects considered as ends and what motivates our
volition, can give to actions no unconditional or moral worth…[this] can be found nowhere but in the principle
of the will, irrespective of the ends that can be brought about by such action” (G 4: 400). This appears to say that
moral rightness is not a function of the value of intended or actual outcomes. Kant subsequently says that a
categorical imperative “declares an action to be objectively necessary of itself without reference to any purpose
—that is, even without any further end” (G 4:415). A categorical imperative “commands a certain line of
conduct directly, without assuming or being conditional on any further goal to be reached by that conduct” (G
4:416). These certainly appear to be the words of someone who rejects the idea that what makes actions right is
primarily their relationship to what good may come of those actions, someone who rejects outright the act
consequentialist form of teleology. Moreover, Kant begins the Groundwork by noting that character traits such
as the traditional virtues of courage, resolution, moderation, self-control, or a sympathetic cast of mind possess
no unconditional moral worth, (G 4:393–94, 398–99). If the moral rightness of an action is grounded in the value
of the character traits of the person who performs or would perform it then it seems Kant thinks that it would be
grounded in something of only conditional value. This certainly would not comport well with the virtue ethics
form of teleology.
Second, there are deeper theoretical claims and arguments of Kant’s in both the Groundwork and in the second
Critique that appear to be incompatible with any sort of teleological form of ethics. These claims and arguments
all stem from Kant’s insistence that morality is grounded in the autonomy of a rational will. For instance, Kant
states that “if the will seeks the law that is to determine it anywhere else than in the fitness of its maxims for its
own giving of universal law…heteronomy always results” (G 4:441). If the law determining right and wrong is
grounded in either the value of outcomes or the value of the character of the agent, it seems it will not be found
in the fitness of the action’s maxim to be a universal law laid down by the agent’s own rational will. And Kant’s
most complete treatment of value, the second Critique’s “On the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical
Reason”, appears to be a relentless attack on any sort of teleological moral theory. “The concept of good and
evil” he states, “must not be determined before the moral law (for which, as it would seem, this concept would
have to be made the basis) but only (as was done here) after it and by means of it” (CPrR 5:63).
A number of Kant’s readers have come to question this received view, however. Perhaps the first philosopher to
suggest a teleological reading of Kant was John Stuart Mill. In the first chapter of his Utilitarianism, Mill
implies that the Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative could only sensibly be interpreted as a
test of the consequences of universal adoption of a maxim. Several 20th century theorists have followed Mill’s
suggestion, most notably, R. M. Hare. Hare argued that moral judgments such as “Stealing is wrong” are in fact
universal prescriptions (“No stealing anywhere by anyone!”). And because they are universal, Hare argued, they
forbid making exceptions. That in turn requires moral judgments to give each person’s wellbeing, including our
own, equal weight. And when we give each person’s wellbeing equal weight, we are acting to produce the best
overall outcome. Thus, in his view, the CI is “simply utilitarianism put into other words” (1993, p. 103). More
recently, David Cummiskey (1996) has argued that Kant’s view that moral principles are justified because they
are universalizable is compatible with those principles themselves being consequentialist. Indeed, Cummiskey
argues that they must be: Respect for the value of humanity entails treating the interests of each as counting for
one and one only, and hence for always acting to produce the best overall outcome.
There are also teleological readings of Kant’s ethics that are non-consequentialist. Barbara Herman (1993) has
urged philosophers to “leave deontology behind” as an understanding of Kant’s moral theory on the grounds that
the conception of practical reason grounding the Categorical Imperative is itself a conception of value. Herman’s
idea is that Kant never meant to say that no value grounds moral principles. That, she argues, would imply that
there would be no reason to conform to them. Instead, Kant thought the principles of rationality taken together
constitute rational agency, and rational agency so constituted itself functions as a value that justifies moral action
(1993, 231). Herman’s proposal thus has Kant’s view grounding the rightness of actions in rational agency, and
then in turn offering rational agency itself up as a value. Both Paul Guyer and Allen Wood have offered
proposals that differ from Herman’s in content, but agree on the general form of teleology that she defends as a
reading of Kant. Guyer argues that autonomy itself is the value grounding moral requirements. Moral thinking
consists in recognizing the priceless value of a rational agent’s autonomous will, something in light of whose
value it is necessary for any rational agent to modify his behavior (1998, 22–35). And Wood argues that
humanity itself is the grounding value for Kant. While the second Critique claims that good things owe their
value to being the objects of the choices of rational agents, they could not, in his view, acquire any value at all if
the source of that value, rational agency, itself had no value (1999, 130; see also 157–8). Finally, Rae Langton
has argued that if Kant’s theory is to be thought of as an objectivistic view, we must suppose that the value of
humanity and the good will are independent of simply being the objects of our rational choices. If their value
thereby becomes the source of the rightness of our actions — say, our actions are right if and because they treat
that self-standing value in various ways — then her reading too is teleological.
It is of considerable interest to those who follow Kant to determine which reading — teleological or
deontological — was actually Kant’s, as well as which view ought to have been his. A powerful argument for
the teleological reading is the motivation for Herman’s proposal: What rationale can we provide for doing our
duty at all if we don’t appeal to it’s being good to do it? But a powerful argument for the deontological reading is
Kant’s own apparent insistence that the authority of moral demands must come simply from their being the
demands of a rational will, quite apart from the value that will may have (see Schneewind 1996; Johnson 2007,
2008; and Reath 1994). On the latter view, moral demands gain their authority simply because a rational will,
insofar as you are rational, must will them. Proponents of this reading are left with the burden of answering
Herman’s challenge to provide a rationale for having willed such demands, although one response may be that
the very question Herman raises does not make sense because it asks, in effect, why it is rational to be rational.
On the former view, by contrast, a rationale is at hand: because your will is, insofar as it is rational, good.
Proponents of this former reading are, however, then left with the burden of explaining how it could be the
autonomy of the will alone that explains the authority of morality.
14. Metaethics
It has seemed to a number of Kant’s interpreters that it is important to determine whether Kant’s moral
philosophy was realist, anti-realist or something else (e.g. a constructivist). This issue is tricky because the terms
“realism,” “anti-realism” and “constructivism” are terms of art.
One relevant issue is whether Kant’s views commit him to the thesis that moral judgments are beliefs, and so apt
to be evaluated for their truth or falsity (or are “truth apt”).
One might have thought that this question is quite easy to settle. At the basis of morality, Kant argued, is the
Categorical Imperative, and imperatives are not truth apt. It makes little sense to ask whether “Leave the gun,
take the cannoli.” is true. But, in fact, the question is not at all easy. For one thing, moral judgments such as
“Lying is wrong” might well be best analyzed according to Kant’s views as “The Categorical Imperative
commands us not to lie”, and this judgment is not an imperative, but a report about what an imperative
commands. Thus while at the foundation of morality there would be an imperative which is not truth apt,
particular moral judgments themselves would describe what that imperative rules out and so would themselves
be truth apt.
Philosophers such as R.M. Hare, however, have taken Kant’s view to be that moral judgments are not truth apt.
Although on the surface moral judgments can look as if they describe a moral world, they are, as Hare reads
Kant, “prescriptions”, not “descriptions”. This is not, in his view, to say that Kant’s ethics portrays moral
judgments as lacking objectivity. Objectivity, according to Hare, is to be understood as universality, and the
Categorical Imperative prescribes universally.
A second issue that has received considerable attention is whether Kant is a metaethical constructivist or realist.
Constructivism in metaethics is the view that moral truths are, or are determined by, the outcomes of actual or
hypothetical procedures of deliberation or choice. Many who interpret Kant as a constructivist claim that his
analysis of “duty” and “good will” reveals that if there are moral requirements then the agents who are bound to
them have autonomy of the will (Rawls 1980; Korsgaard 1996; O’Neil 1989; Reath 2006; Hill 1989a, 1989b,
2001; Cureton 2013, 2014; Engstrom 2009). Autonomy, in this sense, means that such agents are both authors
and subjects of the moral law and, as such, are not bound by any external requirements that may exist outside of
our wills. Instead, we are only subject to moral requirements that we impose on ourselves through the operation
of our own reason independently of our natural desires and inclinations. The common error of previous ethical
theories, including sentimentalism, egoism and rationalism, is that they failed to recognize that morality
presupposes that we have autonomy of the will. These theories mistakenly held that our only reasons to be moral
derive from hypothetical imperatives about how to achieve given moral ends that exist independently of the
activity of reason itself (for a discussion of Kant’s more specific objections to previous ethical theories, see
Schneewind 2009). On these interpretations, Kant is a skeptic about arbitrary authorities, such as God, natural
feelings, intrinsic values or primitive reasons that exist independently of us. Only reason itself has genuine
authority over us, so we must exercise our shared powers of reasoned deliberation, thought and judgment,
guided by the Categorical Imperative as the most basic internal norm of reason, to construct more specific moral
requirements. Kantians in this camp, however, disagree about how this rational procedure should be
characterized.
Other commentators interpret Kant as a robust moral realist (Ameriks 2003; Wood 1999; Langton 2007; Kain
2004). According to these philosophers, Kant’s theory, properly presented, begins with the claim that rational
nature is an objective, agent-neutral and intrinsic value. The moral law then specifies how we should regard and
treat agents who have this special status. Autonomy of the will, on this view, is a way of considering moral
principles that are grounded in the objective value of rational nature and whose authority is thus independent of
the exercise of our wills or rational capacities.
Some interpreters of Kant, most notably Korsgaard (1996), seem to affirm a kind of quietism about metaethics
by rejecting many of the assumptions that contemporary metaethical debates rest on. For example, some of these
philosophers seem not to want to assert that moral facts and properties just are the outcomes of deliberative
procedures. Rather, they seem more eager to reject talk of facts and properties as unnecessary, once a wholly
acceptable and defensible procedure is in place for deliberation. That is, the whole framework of facts and
properties suggests that there is something we need to moor our moral conceptions to “out there” in reality, when
in fact what we only need a route to decision. Once we are more sensitive to the ethical concerns that really
matter to us as rational agents, we will find that many of the questions that animate metaethicists turn out to be
non-questions or of only minor importance. Others have raised doubts, however, about whether Kantians can so
easily avoid engaging in metaethical debates (Hussain & Shaw 2013).
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Kant’s original German and Latin writings can be found in Königlichen Preußischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften (ed.), 1900–, Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Most translations include
volume and page numbers to this standard Academy edition. Citations in this article do so as well. There are
many English translations of Kant’s primary ethical writings. The recent Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant provides critical translations of Kant’s published works as well as selections from his
correspondence and lectures. The following volumes of that series are especially relevant to his moral theory:
Practical Philosophy, translated by Mary Gregor, 1996. Includes: “An Answer to the Question: What is
Enlightenment?,” Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, and The
Metaphysics of Morals.
Religion and Rational Theology, translated by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, 1996. Includes: Religion
within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Anthropology, History, and Education, translated by Robert Louden and Guenther Zoeller, 2008. Includes: “Idea
for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim,” Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, and
“Lectures on Pedagogy”
Lectures on Ethics, translated by Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind, 2001.
Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, 1998.
Recent Commentaries on Kant’s Ethical Writings
There have been several comprehensive commentaries on the Groundwork that have been published recently,
some of which also include new English translations.
Allison, Henry, 2011, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Denis, Lara, 2005, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
Guyer, Paul, 2007, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals: A Reader’s Guide, New York: Continuum.
Hill, Thomas & Zweig, Arnulf, 2003, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Höffe, Otfried (ed. ), 1989, “Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten”: Ein Kooperativer Kommentar, Frankfurt:
Vittorio Klostermann.
Schönecker, Dieter, 2015, Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary,
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press.
Timmermann, Jens, 2007, Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wolff, Robert Paul, 1973, The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics
of Morals, New York: Harper & Row.
There are also recent commentaries on the The Metaphysics of Morals:
Andreas Trampota, Andreas, Sensen, Oliver & Timmermann, Jens (eds.), 2011, Kant’s “Tugendlehre”: A
Commentary, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 343–364.
Byrd, Sharon & Hruschka, Joachim, 2010 Kant’s Doctrine of Right: A Commentary, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Gregor, Mary, 1963, The Laws of Freedom, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
The classic commentary on the Critique of Practical Reason is:
Beck, Lewis White, 1960, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Other Secondary Sources
Allison, Henry, 1990, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ameriks, Karl, 2003, “On Two Non-Realist Interpretations of Kant’s Ethics,” in his Interpreting Kant’s
Critiques, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 263–282.
Aune, Bruce, 1979, Kant’s Theory of Morals, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Baron, Marcia, 2003, “Acting from Duty” in Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Allen
Wood (trans. ), New Haven: Yale University Press, 98–9.
–––, 1995, Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology Ithica: Cornell University Press.
Baxley, Anne Margaret, 2010, Kant’s Theory of Virtue: The Value of Autocracy, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Betzler, Monica, 2008, Kant’s Ethics of Virtue, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Carnois, Bernard, 1987, The Coherence of Kant’s Doctrine of Freedom, D. Booth (tr.), Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Cureton, Adam, 2013, “A Contractualist Reading of Kant’s Proof of the Formula of Humanity,” Kantian Review,
18(3): 363–86.
––– forthcoming, “Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will,” in Iskra Fileva (ed.), Perpsectives on
Character, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
––– & Thomas E. Hill, 2014, “Kant on Virtue and the Virtues,” in Nancy Snow (ed.) Cultivating Virtue, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 87–110.
––– & Thomas E. Hill, forthcoming, “Kant on Virtue: Seeking the Ideal in Human Conditions,” in Nancy Snow
(ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtue, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2014, “Making Room for Rules” Philosophical Studies, 172(3): 737–759.
Darwall, Stephen, 1985, “Kantian Practical Reason Defended,” Ethics, 96: 89–99.
–––, 1977, “Two Kinds of Respect,” Ethics, 88: 36–49.
Denis, Lara, 2006, “Kant’s Conception of Virtue,” in Paul Guyer (ed. ), Cambridge Companion to Kant and
Modern Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 505–537.
Engstrom, Stephen, 1992, “The Concept of the Highest Good in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 51(4): 747–80.
–––, 2009, The Form of Practical Knowledge, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
–––, 2002, “The Inner Freedom of Virtue,” in Mark Timmons (ed. ), Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpetative
Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 289–315.
Feldman, Fred, 1978, “Kantian Ethics,” in his Introductory Ethics, New York: Prentice-Hall, 97–117.
Foot, Philippa, 1972, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” The Philosophical Review, 81(3):
305–316.
Guyer, Paul, 1987, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2000, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness, New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2005, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays, New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2009, “Problems with Freedom: Kant’s Argument in Groundwork III and its Subsequent Emendations,” in
Jens Timmermann (ed. ) Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 176–202.
Herman, Barbara, 1993, The Practice of Moral Judgment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
–––, 1996, “Making Room for Character,” in Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty, in
S. Engstrom and J. Whiting (eds.), New York: Cambridge University Press, 36–60.
Hill, Thomas E., 2001, “Hypothetical Consent in Kantian Constructivism,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 18
(2): 300–329. Reprinted in his 2002 Human Welfare and Moral Worth, New York: Cambridge University
Press, 61–96
–––, 1989a, “Kantian Constructivism in Ethics,” Ethics, 99: 752–70. Reprinted in his 1992 Dignity and
Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 226–250.
–––, 1971, “Kant on Imperfect Duty and Supererogation,” Kant Studien, 62: 55–76. Reprinted in his 1992
Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 147–175.
–––, 2008, “Kantian Virtue and ’Virtue Ethics’,”, in Monika Betzler (ed.), Kant’s Ethics of Virtues, Berlin:
Walter De Gruyter, 29–60. Reprinted in his 2012 Virtue, Rules, and Justice: Kantian Aspirations, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 129–59.
–––, 1973, “The Hypothetical Imperative,” The Philosophical Review, 82: 429–50. Reprinted in his 1992
Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 17–37.
–––, 1989b, “The Kantian Conception of Autonomy,” in The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy,
John Christman (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in his 1992 Dignity and Practical
Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 76–96.
–––, 1972, “The Kingdom of Ends,” Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress: Held at the
University of Rochester, March 30–April 4, 1970, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 307–15. Reprinted in
his 1992 Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 58–66.
Hogan, Desmond, 2009, “Noumenal Affection,” The Philosophical Review, 118(4): 501–32.
Hudson, Hud, 1994, Kant’s Compatibilism, Ithica: Cornell University Press.
Hussain, Nadeem & Shaw, Nishi, 2013, “Meta–ethics and its Discontents: A Case–study of Korsgaard,” in C.
Bagnoli (ed.), Constructivism in Ethics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 82–107.
Johnson, Robert N., 1996, “Kant’s Conception of Merit,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 77: 313–37
–––, 2007, “Value and Autonomy in Kantian Ethics,” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 2, R. Shafer-Landau
(ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 133–48.
–––, 2008, “Was Kant a Virtue Ethicist?,” in Kant’s Ethics of Virtue, M. Betzler (ed.), Berlin: DeGruyter, 61–76.
–––, 2011, Self-Improvement: An Essay in Kantian Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press.
Kain, Patrick, 2004, “Self-legislation in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie,
86(3): 257–306.
Kohl, Markus, 2016, “Kant on Idealism, Freedom, and Standpoints,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie,
98(1): 21–54.
Korsgaard, Christine, 1996, Creating the Kingdom of ends, New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1996, The Sources of Normativity, O. O’Neill (ed.), New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2008, The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology, New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Langton, Rae, 2007, “Objective and Unconditioned Value,” The Philosophical Review, 116(2): 157–185.
Louden, Robert, 2000, Kant’s Impure Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Neill, Onora, 1975, Acting on Principle, New York: Columbia University Press.
–––, 1989, Constructions of Reason, New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1996, Towards Justice and Virtue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paton, H. J. , 1947, The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant’s Moral Philosophy, London: Hutchinson’s
University Library.
Rawls, John, 1971, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
–––, 1980, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy, 77: 515–72. Reprinted in Rawls,
John, 1999, Collected Papers, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 303–358.
–––, 1989, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, E. Förster (ed.),
Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 81–113.
–––, 2000, Lectures in the History of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Reath, Andrews, 2006, Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
–––, 2015, “Did Kant Hold that Rational Volition is Sub Ratione Boni?,” in Mark Timmons & Robert Johnson
(eds.), Reason, Value, and Respect: Kantian Themes from the Philosophy of Thomas E Hill, Jr. , New York:
Oxford University Press, 232–55.
–––, 1994, “Legislating the Moral Law,” Nöus, 28(4): 435–464.
Rippon, Simon, 2014, “Were Kant’s Hypothetical Imperatives Wide-Scope Oughts?,” Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 92(4): 783–788.
Ross, W. D., 1954, Kant’s Ethical Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Schmucker, Josef, 1961, Die Ursprünge der Ethik Kants, Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain.
Schneewind, J. B. , 2009, “Kant Against the ‘spurious principles of morality’,” in J. Timmermann (ed.),
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1996, “Kant and Stoic Ethics,” in S. Engstrom and J. Whiting (eds.) Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics:
Rethinking Happiness and Duty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 285–301.
Schroeder, Mark, 2005, “The Hypothetical Imperative?,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 83(3): 357–372.
Sensen, Oliver, 2013, “Kant’s Constructivism” in C. Bagnoli (ed.), Constructivism in Ethics, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 63–81.
–––, 2011, “Kant on Duties Toward Others From Respect (TL 37–44),” in Andreas Trampota, Oliver Sensen and
Jens Timmermann (eds.), Kant’s “Tugendlehre”: A Commentary, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 343–364.
Sherman, Nancy, 1998, Making a Necessity of Virtue, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sullivan, Roger J., 1989, Immanuel Kant’s Moral Theory, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Surprenant, Chris, 2014, Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue, New York: Routledge.
Timmons, Mark (ed.), 2002, Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Wolff, Robert Paul (ed.), 1967, Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
––– (ed.), 1969, Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals: Text and Commentary, Indianapolis, IN:
Bobbs-Merrill.
Wood, Allen, 1970, Kant’s Moral Religion, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
–––, 1999, Kant’s Ethical Thought, New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2007, Kantian Ethics, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Academic Tools
How to cite this entry.
Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society.
Look up this entry topic at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers, with links to its database.
Other Internet Resources
Bibliography of secondary literature on Kant’s Ethics (PDF) maintained by Jorg Schroth
Kant on the Web, maintained by Stephen Palmquist.
Kant Papers, articles, links, news and reviews about Kantian philosophy.
Related Entries
autonomy: personal | character, moral | consequentialism | consequentialism: rule | constructivism: in metaethics
| ethics: deontological | ethics: virtue | Kant, Immanuel | Kant, Immanuel: account of reason | Kant, Immanuel:
aesthetics and teleology | Kant, Immanuel: and Hume on morality | Kant, Immanuel: philosophical development
| Kant, Immanuel: philosophy of religion | Kant, Immanuel: social and political philosophy | Kant:
transcendental idealism | morality, definition of | practical reason | respect | rights
Copyright © 2016 by
Robert Johnson
Adam Cureton
Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative.
Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2016 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the
Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University
Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054
https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=kant-moral
https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/preview/kant-moral/
https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/
https://www.inphoproject.org/entity?sep=kant-moral&redirect=True
https://www.inphoproject.org/
http://philpapers.org/sep/kant-moral/
http://philpapers.org/
http://www.ethikseite.de/bib/bkant
http://staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk/ppp/Kant.html
http://kantpapers.org/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-character/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism-rule/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constructivism-metaethics/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-morality/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-development/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/practical-reason/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/respect/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/
https://plato.stanford.edu/info.html#c
mailto:JohnsonRN%40missouri%2eedu
https://philosophy.utk.edu/staff/cureton.php
mailto:adamcureton%40utk%2eedu
https://plato.stanford.edu/fundraising/
https://www-csli.stanford.edu/
https://plato.stanford.edu/info.html#c
http://mally.stanford.edu/
John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism Notes
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
John Stuart Mill published his essay “Utilitarianism” in 1861 at the age of fifty-five. Utilitarianism
means “useful” and so his essay concerns the “usefulness of how and what we do to live well.” “Utilitarianism”
is an essay, which is a short literary composition on a single subject usually presenting the author’s
viewpoint. It is probably the most widely read essay of its type. This can be attributed to both its conciseness
and its scope.
Mill’s father, James, pushed him academically, and by the age of three he had learned Greek. In his early
twenties, Mill had a mental breakdown from which he suffered intermittent bouts for the rest of his life. His
father was a great believer in utilitarianism and was a close friend of philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who
believed that happiness could actually be measured and quantified. John Stuart Mill raised the cause of
utilitarianism from quantification to humanity. He believed that we could discover without quatification the
cause and effect of more happiness by looking at the past and predicting what will happen in the future under
similar circumstances. For Mill, cause and effect creates a decision and a behavior, which then forms a
loop. Mill believed we haven’t learned anything if we don’t use what we have learned. Consequences help us
plan for the future.
Mill wrote this essay to debate his critics’ assumption that he was 1) hedonistic, 2) had no first
principle, and 3) used circular reasoning. He uses a scientific, systematic defense, which is observable,
measurable, and predictable, in order to advocate a moral solution in a philosophical way. Utilitarianism
requires that ethical and political customs should be judged by their ability to advance the happiness for
mankind. Mill tries to give a scientific answer of what the good is that is rooted in human nature, and he tries
to demonstrate the difference between selfishness and self-interest. For instance, it is in our own self-interest to
make sure that those around us are happy. This does not mean that we run out and try to fix the unhappiness of
the world. Mill believes that the majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit of the world, but for
that of individuals—that which the good of the world consists.
John Stuart Mill’s viewpoint and his first principle is the “happiness principle,” which states that in
order to be happy we should all strive for the greatest happiness (or good) for the greatest number. This
“greatest happiness principle” holds that actions are “right” in proportion, as they tend to promote happiness;
wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. For Mill “happiness” is intended pleasure and the
absence of pain, and “unhappiness” is pain and the privation of pleasure.
Mill maintains that there are two types of pleasure: intellectual pleasure (which uses the higher
faculties) and base pleasure (which are those of sensations). Those capable of both would choose
the intellectual pleasure. Happiness is also subject to QUANTITY and QUALITY and of the two; the one that is
based on quality is the most agreeable. For example, pleasure that employs the higher faculties of man are of a
greater quality. Mill states that “few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower
animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasure…no intelligent human being would consent
to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish
and base, even if they were persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than
they are with theirs.” Mill contends that the quality of happiness for a person of higher faculties requires more
to make him or her happy. They are also more capable of greater suffering…and can never really wish to sink
into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence.
Thus for Mill, “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;” better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. For if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know
their own side of the questions. The human being, who is the other party in the comparison, knows both
sides. The test therefore of judging quality and the rule for measuring it against quantity requires self-
consciousnessand self-observation, whereas the person of lesser intellect fails to make the comparisons.
Arguments against Utilitarianism
1. It doesn’t work in practice. How do you tell who is and who isn’t happy?
2. How do you work out what produces happiness?
3. Who wants to part of the minority that may be crushed, in order to make the majority happy?
4. Utilitarianism looks at actions and their consequences, and disregards the enormously complicating
question of motives.
John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism notes courtesy of Joyce Murphy, Adjunct Philosophy Instructor
Aristotle and Common Sense Ethics
Aristotle was born in 384 BCE and died in 322 BCE and is classified as one of the greatest
philosophers of all time. He was born in Stagira and was often called the Stagirite. He came
to Athens as a teenager and remained for two decades in Plato’s Academy. Following Plato’s
death in 347 BCE, Aristotle traveled to Assos and to Lebos, where he associated with
Theophrastus and collected a wealth of biological data, and later to Macedonia, where he
tutored Alexander the Great. His father was a court physician. In 335 BCE he returned to
Athens and founded his own philosophical school in the Lyceum.
Alexander died in 323 BCE which unleashed anti-Macedonian forces in Athens. Aristotle was
charged with impiety, but remembering the fate of Socrates he decided to flee to Chalcis
instead of staying and standing trial. Within the year he suffered from a stomach ailment,
some speculate that he may have been poisoned, and died.
Aristotle’s moral philosophy, as it appears in his manuscript now called Nicomachean Ethics,
reflects his teleological (purpose) metaphysics. The notion of goal or purpose is the
overriding one in his moral theory. Aristotle noted that the entire animal world (including
man) appeared to have a purpose. What then is man’s purpose or function? What separates
man from the animals? His ability to reason. Thus, the human’s function is to engage in an
activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue and which follows a rational
principle. Even though Aristotle wrote about virtue, values and morals, it’s interesting to note
that he was an elitist. For instance, he believed that certain material conditions must hold
before happiness can be achieved. Here are the conditions: we need good friends, some
wealth, and political power. We need a good birth, good children, and good looks (…for the
man who is ugly in appearance…is not likely to be happy). We must not be very short.
Furthermore, we must be free from the need of performing manual labor. (No man can
practice virtue who is living the life of a mechanic or laborer.) Except for these elitist biases,
Aristotle’s moral theory would be left intact.
In his ethical writings Aristotle adopted a scientific or empirical approach to ethical
problems. Instead of trying to reflect on what the good life is for everyone, he examined the
behavior and talked with various people in everyday life. He noticed that some people are
leading what they call “good lives” and others are leading what they call “bad lives.”
He further noticed that the various lives that people of common sense considered to be “good”
all contain one common characteristic: happiness. And those who think their lives are bad
have the characteristic of being unhappy. Therefore, Aristotle concludes that the good life for
man is a “life of happiness.”
But what is happiness? Is it a life of pleasure, success, and fame? He tries to demonstrate
this in his Nicomachean Ethics. This process is now called analytical philosophy. “Happiness
is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.” This definition may not be much
clearer and in fact happiness has been a puzzle to philosophers for centuries.
Aristotle is trying to explain that happiness is not “static.” It is an activity. We sometimes
think of happiness as a fixed goal that awaits us if we behave in certain ways. People who
think this way think that happiness is an object.
But Aristotle is actually denying this. Happiness is not a goal; rather it is something that
accompanies certain activities. Happiness is a characteristic of men’s lives. Happiness is a
way of doing things; for instance, of refusing to be defeated by circumstances. Happiness is
like this: it is a way of engaging in the various activities of life, such as eating, making love,
working and so on. If a person engages in these activities with a degree of balance or
moderation (temperance/self-control) then we can say that that person is happy. The person
who enjoys intellectual pursuits, friendship, is not frequently downcast, depressed, and
anxious; so we can say that person appears happy.
Aristotle’s classical moralist theories attempt to answer two questions: What is the good life
for people? And how ought people to behave? His reply would be: 1) the good life for
people is a life of happiness and 2) people ought to behave so as to achieve happiness.
WeLLLLLLLLLL—–How should we behave in order to achieve happiness? Aristotle’s
answer is to be found in the well-known formula called the “doctrine of the mean,” often
referred to as the “Golden Mean.”
For Aristotle there is no one answer for everyone. For instance, what does it take to fulfill one
person may not be the same for another person. The correct amount is a “mean” between
eating too much and too little–to keep from going from one extreme to another. Thus, there
are various correct ways of living for different people. What is good for one person may not
be good for another. And sometimes we have to discover this through experimentation or trial
and error as we grow. The choices that we make are all context bound and in accordance
with (REASON). In this regard Aristotle is an empiricist in ethics.
Thus courage, liberality, pride, modesty and so on are virtues of moderation. All this
requires moral understanding and we must first have a sound training in good habits and
virtues when we are young so that when we come to understand what the golden mean is for
us, we will also have the self control to follow it. Aristotle demonstrates a morality of
“common sense” in dealing with ethical issues.
Aristotle and Common Sense notes courtesy of Joyce Murphy, Adjunct Philosophy Instructor
Uganda’s Women: Children, Drudgery
and Pain
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online
publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter,
edit or update them.
“Uganda’s Women: Children, Drudgery and Pain”
When 28-year-old Safuyati Kawuda married the man she remembers as “handsome and elegant,”
her husband scraped together the bride price: five goats and three chickens. The animals
represented a centuries-old custom intended to compensate Mrs. Kawuda’s father for losing the
labor of his daughter.
In the decade since, Mrs. Kawuda has rarely seen her husband, who long ago left this hot and dusty
village for a town 70 miles away. She has accepted her husband’s acquisition of two other wives and
has given birth to five of his 13 children.
Instead of laboring for her father she has toiled for her husband instead — hauling firewood, fetching
water, digging in the fields, producing the food the family eats, and bearing and caring for the
children.
Like Mrs. Kawuda, women in rural Africa are the subsistence farmers. They produce, without
tractors, oxen, or even plows, more than 70 percent of the continent’s food, according to the World
Bank. Back-breaking hand cultivation is a job that African men consider to be demeaning “women’s
work.” The male responsibility is generally to sell the food the women produce. But as urbanization
has stepped up, men have gone to the cities in search of other jobs, leaving women like Mrs.
Kawuda alone.
Many Inequalities.
The discrepancy between the physical labor of women and men is accompanied by other pervasive
inequalities. In the vast majority of African countries, women do not own or inherit land. Within
families, boys are encouraged to go to school, girls are not. In many places, women treat wife-
beating as an accepted practice. The Uganda Women’s Lawyers Association recently embarked on a
campaign to convince women that wife-battering is not a sign of a man’s love.
Recent surveys in Africa show other significant disparities between men and women. In 10 African
countries, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, women and children together make up
77 percent of the population. Yet in only 16 percent of the households in those countries do the
women have the legal right to own property.
Despite calls by the United Nations for the improvement of the lives of African women and efforts by
the World Bank to finance projects focused on women, little has been done to improve the dismal
status of rural women, African and Western experts say. With the continent’s worsening economies in
the 1980’s, women suffered even more.
“The poor, the majority of whom are women, have had to take on additional work burdens in order to
cope with cutbacks in social services and the increased cost of living,” the Weekly Review, a
magazine in Kenya, reported last year.
No Expectations
Mrs. Kawuda has never attended school. She cannot read or write, although her husband can. She
has no radio. The farthest she has been from home is Jinja, 70 miles away. She has no expectations
of a better life because she has known nothing else. But her ignorance of the outside world does not
stop her from knowing her life is unrelentingly tough. She knows that in her bones. “Everything is
difficult,” Mrs. Kawuda said, as she bent over to hoe cassava, her bare, rough feet splattered with
dark dirt. “It’s more of a problem than it used to be to find firewood. If you can’t find wood on the
ground, you have to cut it and there is no one to help you. Digging in the fields is the most difficult. I
don’t like it.”
Mrs. Kawuda shares her world of perpetual fatigue with her five children; her husband’s second wife,
Zainabu Kasoga, 27, and her four children. Her husband’s third wife — “the town wife” — lives in Jinja,
where the husband, 31-year-old Kadiri Mpyanku, a tea packer, spends most of his time. When the
husband visited Mrs. Kawuda on a recent weekend, he brought enough sugar for three days and a
packet of beans. Mrs. Kawuda said she was dependent on him for clothes and other essentials, and
money that she said he did not always have. In most households in the area, the men also live most
of the time in either Jinja or Kampala, the capital. Here in the village, 120 miles northeast of
Kampala, Mrs. Kawuda and Mrs. Kasoga run a household with another woman, the wife of their
husband’s brother, Sayeda Naigaga, 20, and her three children.
Village Life
The women live without running water or electricity in three small, mud-wall structures. In the outdoor
courtyard, life grinds on: the peeling and chopping of food, eating by adults and feeding of infants,
washing, bathing, weaving and the receiving of guests all take place on the orange clay ground,
packed smooth by the passage of bare feet. In the old days, Ugandan men built separate houses for
each wife, but such luxuries disappeared with the collapse of the economy. Mrs. Kawuda and her five
children sleep in one room of the main shelter and Mrs. Kasoga and her four children in another.
When their husband is around, he shuttles between the two bedrooms.
Mrs. Kawuda is of the Bisoga tribe, the second largest in Uganda and one where polygamy is
common. Sexual and marriage mores differ in various parts of Africa. The Uganda Women’s Lawyers
Association estimates that 50 percent of marriages in Uganda are polygamous and, according to
United Nations figures, a similar percentage exists in West Africa. In Kenya, the Government’s
Women’s Bureau estimates that about 30 percent of the marriages are polygamous. However,
because of the economic burden of keeping several wives and families, the practice is declining, the
bureau says.
Wives Often Hostile
Often the wives in a polygamous marriage are hostile toward each other. But perhaps as a survival
instinct, Mrs. Kawuda and Mrs. Kasoga are friendly, taking turns with Mrs. Naigaga to cook for the
15-member household. Days start with the morning ritual of collecting water. For these Ugandan
women, the journey to the nearest pond takes half an hour. The six-gallon cans, when full of water,
are heavy on the trip home. Digging in the fields is the most loathed of the chores, but also the one
the women feel most obliged to do since the family’s food supply comes from what they grow. As
they work under the sun, the women drape old pieces of clothing on their heads for protection. The
youngest child, 2-year-old Suniya clings to her mother’s back while Mrs. Kawuda hunches over,
swinging a hoe, a sight as pervasive in rural Africa as an American mother gliding a cart along the
aisles of a supermarket. “Having a baby on your back is easy,” Mrs. Kawuda said. “When you are
eight months pregnant and digging, it is more difficult.”
There was no possibility the husband would help in the fields. It was his job to “supervise,” said Mrs.
Kawuda, ridiculing a suggestion that he might pitch in.
Husband Visits
When he arrived late on a recent Saturday night, Mr. Mpyanku was treated as the imperious ruler by
the children, some of whom tentatively came to greet him. He was barely acknowledged by the
women, who seemed a little fearful and immediately served tea.
By early Sunday morning, he had disappeared to the nearby trading post to be with his male
friends.”He has gone to discuss business with his friends,” Mrs. Kawuda said. “What business can I
discuss with him? Will we talk to him about digging cassava?” Mrs. Kawuda said her husband had
promised not to take any more wives. “But you never know what he thinks,” she said. “I can’t
interfere in his affairs. If I did, he would say: ‘Why is she poking her nose into my affairs?’ ”
Fertility and children remain at the center of rural marriage in Africa. Large numbers of children
improve a household’s labor pool and provide built-in security for parents in old age. Mrs. Kawuda
said she wanted one more child, in the hopes of its being another boy. After that, she said, she would
use an injectible form of contraceptive. It is a method popular among African rural women because it
can be used without their husband’s knowledge. But in reality, contraception was an abstraction to
Mrs. Kawuda since she had no idea where to get it. She had never heard of condoms.
AIDS Is a Concern
A recent concern for African women is AIDS, which like much else in their lives they seem powerless
to control. Unconvinced by her husband’s assurances that he is faithful to his town wife, Mrs.
Kawuda said: “He can say it’s all right, we need not worry. But you never know what he does in town.
He fears AIDS, too. But he messes around too much.”
A worldly person compared to his wives, Mr. Mpyanku speaks reasonable English and has traveled
to Kenya. He described himself as the provider of cash for the rural family. But Mr. Mpyanku’s
emphasis is on his own livelihood and his urban life.
He rode the most comfortable form of transportation home, a nonstop minibus from Jinja that cost
about $1.50, instead of the cheaper taxi at $1. He would do the same on his return. Yet his oldest
child, a daughter, Maliyamu, 10, missed much of her schooling last year. Her report card said her $7
in school fees had not been paid. It was a cheerless sign that Mrs. Kawuda’s daughter would, like her
mother, remain uneducated and repeat for another generation the cycle of female poverty and
punishing physical labor.
