Online Lecture: Kant and The Categorical Imperative; developed for Business Ethics (Philosophy 352) at Widener University

Kant and the Categorical Imperative:

Aside from Utilitarianism, no single theory in Modern times has changed the way we view morality or has had a bigger impact on moral thought than the moral theories of Immanuel Kant. Kant created a deontological theory of ethics, a “how we ought to act” in all situations, regardless of the consequences, that he thought every rational person would not only endorse, but discover for themselves if they sought it out. His theory endorsed a set of absolute moral laws that he argued any rational person could correctly formulate by use of a special device he called The Categorical Imperative.

This will appear as if I take the long way about to get to his theoretical implications, but I find it necessary to do so in order to explain properly what he said. Kant believed that the key difference between humans and animals was the ability of human beings to use reason to guide them in their decision making process. Now this difference becomes more important once you realize what Kant had in mind. Kant believed that there were such things as Absolute Moral Laws, that not only existed, but also were as real, valid, and universal as the laws of mathematics.

Kant knew and understood the process by which the laws of mathematics were discovered, from the time of Pythagoras in ancient Greece, to the time of his contemporary Isaac Newton. All of those involved in the discovery of mathematical laws used reason as their guide. He argued that what is true of mathematical laws must also be true of the absolute moral laws as well.

Now, you may at this point, want to wrangle a little bit about his contention that we only discover what is right or wrong using reason. You may find yourself saying, “I know what is right or wrong by gut instinct,” or “my moral thought finds guidance in my emotions,” or “I just know the right thing to do.” At each of these points, where you argue that one or the other of these is the better means by which to “know right from wrong,” you are already using the faculty of reason to decide. This is how Kant proves his point; that by engaging in a debate over which is the proper way to know what is morally correct, you are already using your reason to answer that question. The mere bits of wrangling you do is only to argue for what you think is the proper means by which to know what is morally right. However, in the end, it is your reason which serves as the judge to tell you what you can accurately depend upon to know right from wrong.

Kant argued that all of us use our reason as the judge by which to know what is morally right from wrong, and that only humans possess the faculty that enables us to do so. Furthermore, he stated, to be rational is to be moral. That is, if we all engage our reason properly, we should all act in the same morally right fashion. To be immoral then is to be irrational in a certain sense. In this respect, Kant argued is that there is one proper way by which we can know in every circumstance, independent of any consequence, just by thinking about it, what is Morally Right, and what is Morally Wrong, and that he had formulated the means by which we could do so.

Let me switch gears here for a moment to get into something relevant (even if seemingly out of order). Kant wanted to specify exactly what we meant when people used the word “should.” In some cases, he noticed, we use the word should in a more conditional, or hypothetical sense. For example, we say, “If you want to get an ‘A’ in this class, then you should study diligently.” Or moreover, “if you want to stay out of jail, you shouldn’t break the law” (or not get caught, or have money for O.J.’s lawyer, etc.). The way we understand these sentences, is to consider our personal or shared goals, or what we desire for ourselves or others. The binding force upon any of these “should’s” is our desire to do them, otherwise, in order to change the “should” or to change what we hypothetically ought to do, all we need to change is our goals or wants.

However, Kant noticed that this isn’t the way people talk, or what we mean, when discussing what is morally right or wrong, at least not in the sense of what is absolutely right or wrong. When we speak of what is morally right or wrong, we tend to speak in the following manner: You ought to do such and such, period. For example, when we speak of murder, we don’t say “if you don’t want to go to jail, you shouldn’t kill,” or more interestingly, we don’t say, “if you don’t like that person, then you should kill them.” What we do say is, “murder is wrong, period.”

Kant said that statements of this type are “categorical,” because they apply to all instances of that particular action. In the case of murder, we say that “murder” is categorically wrong; there are never circumstances under which murder is permissible[1]. As such, Kant knew that we needed a way to determine the merely hypothetical uses of the word “should” from the uses of the word “should” that were of the categorical type. To do this, he formulated the Categorical Imperative.

Remember, I remarked earlier that Kant believed that absolute moral laws existed, and were as real as the laws of geometry, algebra, calculus, and all of mathematics. Another quality that Kant noticed about mathematics was that all mathematical laws had three distinct properties. One, they were all known a priori, which is to say, they were all known “before the fact” (literal translation). In the case of mathematics, this is quite easy to see—no right triangle ever had to exist anywhere in nature in order for Pythagoras’ theorem to hold true of any right triangle, if any ever did happen to exist. Likewise for Kant and morality—he believed that if there were moral laws, we could know them without having to act first to determine what exactly were the consequences of our actions. In a certain sense, he argued that there never need have been humans for these moral laws to exist, but that they would still be knowable to a being that possessed the faculty of reason. (Likewise, most, if not all of you understand this. For instance, the Ten Commandments in the Bible were God’s laws for how he said humans should live, i.e., “thou shalt not kill.” As an all-knowing God, God would have known what these laws were even before God created humans.)

Two, the laws would all possess the property of consistency. Not only would these laws never contradict each other, but also, these laws, when applied, would never produce a situation in which you could no longer apply them, nor would they, once applied, lead to a situation in which they resulted in a contradiction in terms. In math this is quite clear. The laws of algebra, calculus, trig, geometry, never lead into a situation in which they are in conflict with each other (quite the contrary actually, as all of the theorems, postulates, and the results of the proofs all hinge together systematically). Kant thought this was also true of the laws of morality. Just as consistently applying the notion that “vertical angles are equal” (for example) would never lead to a case in which you could no longer apply that understanding; so too would the laws of morality, once discovered, ever lead to a situation in which you could no longer apply them, or a situation in which they resulted in a contradiction in terms. If they did, then they truly weren’t absolute moral laws (because they would not apply in all circumstances consistently).

Three, the laws would possess the property of universality. In mathematics, my application of the theorems of geometry will never interfere with your application of those same laws, and vice-versa. Likewise, any human who wants, and possesses the proper amount of understanding and the faculty of reason can also apply them; to such an extent, we can confidently assert that all humans could follow the laws of mathematics. Likewise, for a law of morality to qualify as an absolute moral law, there would be no human exceptions to these rules (they would apply to Kings and subjects alike). Moreover, every human could follow these laws without making it so that other humans could no longer follow these laws.

All right, we’ve finally arrived at the point where I can tell you exactly how Kant discovered what these laws were. Just as each branch of mathematics tells us the mechanisms by which we can arrive at further corollaries, further proofs (in geometry), precise calculations (in calculus), etc., so to does there exist a means by which we can know if a particular “should” statement is actually an absolute moral law. As I mentioned before, Kant called this mechanism (treat it quite literally as a type of computer), the Categorical Imperative. Here’s what it is and says:

Act only according to that maxim that you can at the same time will to be

Universal Law.

“Huh?” Right. By maxim, Kant means take any statement that you want to know if it is or isn’t a universal law. Consider the following case, you’re talking to one of your professors, about why an assignment is late, and you want to know, “is it O.K. for me to lie to this professor?” Kant says that what you really mean in this case is “is it morally right to lie?” To determine the answer, Kant says to first treat your question as if it were already a true statement. To this effect, you would then say of your situation, “it is morally right to lie.”

But we want to know then, if that maxim (“It is morally right to lie”) can actually count as an absolute moral law. To determine this, Kant says that you should apply the categorical imperative to that particular statement by asking yourself “What if everyone did that?” Or in other words, consider the statement, “It is morally right for everyone to lie.” In order to determine if this is true, all we must figure out is if the universal law “It is o.k. for everyone to lie” possesses the three qualities that Kant says every and any universal law must possess.

O.K., so you say, “it is morally right for everyone to lie.” What happens once you say this? Well Kant noticed something about lying—it only works if people generally tend to trust each other. If a stranger approached you in a bar and asked you the time, they generally tend to think that you will tell them the time truthfully. The same is true for your professor listening to the reasons an assignment is late. However, if you were to argue (as a universal law) the notion that lying is morally acceptable, then everyone would know that it is morally right to lie, and the background of trust upon which lies were possible would eventually disappear. Once that occurred, no one could even possibly lie anymore, because all people would view every statement with suspicion, the necessary communicational level of trust required for a successful application of the law would erode, and no one could any longer lie at all. Hence, you would have a situation in which the law could no longer be applied, and as such, it would not possess the criterion of consistency. As such, we can say of the statement, “it is morally right to lie,” is not a universal law.

Now, consider the maxim, “it is morally right to tell the truth.” We run that through the categorical imperative, and ask the question, “what if everyone did that?” at which point you would say, “It is morally right for everyone to tell the truth.” Then we see if that universal law possesses the three qualities that any absolute moral law would need to have if it were truly an absolute moral law.

We can know before hand by using the categorical imperative whether or not any given maxim is a universal law (that is to say, we can work it out in our heads). As such, any universal law possesses the criteria of being a priori.

Also, we can see that everyone can apply this law equally, as there are no problems of universality involved with the application of “it is morally right for everyone to tell the truth.” If everyone understands that it is morally right to tell the truth, everyone can still always tell the truth; unlike the case in lying.

Finally, consider consistency. By stressing categorically that everyone tell the truth in all situations, we may find ourselves with some angry people occasionally (“no, actually I hated that gift.”), but we would never find ourselves in a situation in which the law could no longer be applied, nor would it ever create a contradiction with other moral laws. As such, the statement, “It is morally right for everyone to tell the truth” is actually an absolute moral law that any person, by using their reason, would discover, and by being rational, would then follow, hence making them a moral person.

Kant also thought that he had discovered three other Absolute moral laws, that in tandem with one another, could produce moral instruction enough for every rational person to handle themselves morally in life. The three others were: one, a prohibition against murder; two, a prohibition against stealing; and three, a law that says that we should help those in need. Others have suggested a few more, such as the law that says that, "we should strive to preserve innocent human life" (fits all three criteria). You can work out for yourselves how the other three possess all the properties, and thereby satisfy the requirements to be absolute laws of morality.

Interestingly enough, Kant’s theory has applications to Business Ethics as well, as you could probably discover on your own. For example, take the prohibition against lying—we have an absolute moral law that tells us categorically always to tell the truth. Think of every situation in the business world where you can understand this to apply. Honesty on your resume, telling the truth in sales presentations, not cheating on your taxes, truth in advertising (what “counts” as a lie, is debatable of course), and the need to faithfully follow environmental regulations, etc. Many more situations exist, some of which you may have already encountered on your internships or current jobs—or as Kant would argue, that cheating your company is wrong, as is using the internet for personal reasons (which he would argue is a form of theft).

People are attracted to Kant’s way of thinking because it provides crystal clear, straightforward, and most importantly, a logical way by which we can know (without a doubt!) what is right and what is wrong. People are also attracted to it because Kant suggests that because we are rational creatures, we are duty bound to follow the dictates of reason, to adhere to the universal laws. This understanding provides a great deal of moral force to any moral argument.

Likewise, people have also suggested (other philosophers mostly), that from Kant’s absolute laws of morality, you can also derive certain other morally desirable categories. For instance, if there is a law that says “we should never lie,” and one that says, “we should always tell the truth,” then it follows from these laws that we have both a duty to be honest, and also, that we have a right to be told the truth. (As a contrast, the basis for the Constitutional Rights that you and I possess derive from arguments given in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, which we will read a selection from later.)

From this derivation of rights and duties from the moral laws, we can gain other rights too. For instance, if we have a duty not to steal (since the moral law says, “don’t steal”) then we also have a right to property—a very useful thing in the real world of Business Ethics, especially concerning information piracy, patents, copyrights, what is and what isn’t the intellectual property of the corporation when someone develops it while working there and then leaves the company, etc. All of these rights and duties, and most importantly, if we are commanded by the absolute law “not to kill” then each of us has that most important of rights, the Right to Life. (Note, you can figure out via your own arguments if this applies to fetuses—one does not have to be both a Kantian and a Pro-Lifer—email me if you care to hear about this).

One last thing: Kant had a second formulation of the categorical imperative that he put in the following terms:

Act always to treat humanity, whether in yourself or in others, as an ends

only, and never as a means to an end.

Kant thought that using the categorical imperative in this form would produce the same set of laws, by having us ask “does following this maxim have us treat people as a means, or as an ends-in-themselves.” Consider stealing, if we steal from someone, say to take money to pay our bills, then we are treating that person as a means to serve our own ends, and not as a person with ends in themselves, with their own equally valid uses for that money. The same goes for murder for whatever reason, the same goes for honesty—lying to someone manipulates them, treating them as a means to your end, and for Kant, is never permissible.

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[1] To treat Kant fairly, he did understand the difference between killing in self-defense, obviously not murder, and he believed strongly in capital punishment, which he also did not consider as murder.