A classic exposition of Kant's ethical thought.

The question has been raised whether Nietzsche intends eternal recurrence to be like a categorical imperative. The obvious objection to understanding eternal recurrence as like a categorical imperative is that for a categorical imperative to make any sense, for moral obligation to make any sense, it must be possible for individuals to change themselves. And Nietzsche denies that individuals can change themselves. Magnus thinks the determinism “implicit in the doctine of the eternal recurrence of (...) the same renders any imperative impotent…. How can one will what must happen in any case?” At the other end of the spectrum, those who do hold that eternal recurrence is like a categorical imperative, for their part, tend to ignore or deny the determinism involved in eternal recurrence. This article explores the extent to which it can be claimed that eternal recurrence is like a categorical imperative without downplaying Nietzsche's dterminism. (shrink)

Kant has argued that moral requirements are categorical. Kant's claim has been challenged by some contemporary philosophers; this article defends Kant's doctrine. I argue that Kant's claim captures the unique feature of moral requirements. The main arguments against Kant's claim focus on one condition that a categorical imperative must meet: to be independent of desires. I argue that there is another important, but often ignored, condition that a categorical imperative must meet, and this second condition (...) is crucial to understanding why moral requirements are not hypothetical. I also argue that the claim that moral requirements are not categorical because they depend on desires for motivation is beside the point. The issue of whether moral requirements are categorical is not an issue about whether moral desires or feelings are necessary for moral motivation but are rather an issue about the ground of moral desires or moral feelings. Moral requirements are categorical because they are requirements of reason, and reason makes moral desires or feelings possible. (shrink)

The primary concern of this paper is to outline an explanation of how Kant derives morality from reason. We all know that Kant thought that morality comprises a set of demands that are unconditionally and universally valid. In addition, he thought that to support this understanding of moral principles, one must show that they originate in reason a priori, rather than in contingent facts about human psychology, or the circumstances of human life. But do we really understand how he tries (...) to establish that moral principles originate in reason? In at least two passages in the second section of the Groundwork, Kant insists upon the importance of grounding the moral law in practical reason a priori, and subsequently states a conception of practical reason from which he appears to extract a formulation of the Categorical Imperative. The reasoning employed in these passages would appear to be of central importance to the overall argument of the Groundwork, but in each case the route travelled from the definition of practical reason to the ensuing formulation of the moral law is obscure. My goal is to work out a plausible reconstruction of this portion of Kant’s argument. At the very least, I hope that my interpretation will illuminate the distinctive structure of the Kantian approach to questions of justification in ethics. What I understand of Kant’s view leads me to believe that its aims and overall shape are different in important respects from what is often assumed. It also represents an approach to foundational issues in ethics, which provides an alternative to many contemporary attempts to ground morality in reason. (shrink)

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Trust can be understood as a precondition for a well-functioning society or as a way to handle complexities of living in a risk society, but also as a fundamental aspect of human morality. Interactions on the Internet pose some new challenges to issues of trust, especially connected to disembodiedness. Mistrust may be an important obstacle to Internet use, which is problematic as the Internet becomes a significant arena for political, social and commercial activities necessary for full participation in a liberal (...) democracy. The Categorical Imperative lifts up trust as a fundamental component of human ethical virtues – first of all, because deception and coercion, the antitheses of trust, cannot be universalized. Mistrust is, according to Kant, a natural component of human nature, as we are social beings dependent on recognition by others but also prone to deceiving others. Only in true friendships can this tendency be overcome and give room for unconditional trust. Still we can argue that Kant must hold that trustworthy behaviour as well as trust in others is obligatory, as expressions of respect for humanity. The Kantian approach integrates political and ethical aspects of trust, showing that protecting the external activities of citizens is required in order to act morally. This means that security measures, combined with specific regulations are important preconditions for building online trust, providing an environment enabling people to act morally and for trust-based relationships. (shrink)

Their important exegetical and philosophical disagreements notwithstanding, Pauline Kleingeld and Marcus Willaschek, on the one hand, and Alyssa Bernstein, on the other, seem to agree that Kant’s Categorical Imperative transcends the contemporary dichotomy between moral realism and ethical constructivism. My contribution is an attempt to further elaborate on the third, unique, conceptual option that they have identified. I employ the notion of an “enabling condition,” introduced in epistemology and action theory by Jonathan Dancy, in order to show that (...) the Categorical Imperative enables action and is enabled by action. The Categorical Imperative (as distinct from specific categorical imperatives and moral laws) is discussed as a structural, but still normative, coherence and consistence norm of practical reasoning. As such it is two things at the same time, namely, first, the most fundamental normative background condition of practical deliberation, choice, and action. Second, however, the mutual enabler-enablee-relationship between action and Categorical Imperative points in the other – “not-so-Kantian” – direction as well: individual practical deliberation, understood as the mundane phenomenon that penetrates the lives of agents, is the (existence) condition that enables the Categorical Imperative in normatively-structured action. (shrink)

Kant's argument that the categorical imperative is the source for morality broken down into premise and conclusion logical format.

Is the assimilation of these two formulations of the moral principle by Kant and some of his expositors justified? In the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason Kant claims that his view of morality agrees with the ancient command that man should love his neighbour as himself. Also in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals he regards the Golden Rule as a deduction, though with several limitations, from the second version of the Categorical Imperative.

This essay starts from a consideration of Deleuze's theory of time. It begins with the empty form of time. But the essay's aim is to understand Deleuze's reversal of Platonism in his 1968 Difference and Repetition. There is no question that the stakes of the reversal of Platonism are ontological. But I argue that what is really at stake is a movement of demoralisation. The essay proceeds in three steps. First, we determine what sufficient reason or grounding is, for Deleuze. (...) Sufficient reason is struck with an irreducible ambiguity. It is this ambiguity in sufficient reason that allows it to be taken advantage of, to be used by representation and good sense for a moral purpose. The second part of the essay will therefore concern ‘the moralisation of sufficient reason’. Its focus will be good sense. But then, third, we must understand Deleuze's ‘demoralisation of sufficient reason’, which necessarily passes through others. Like sufficient reason, others are ambiguous, at once lending themselves to what cancels differences, and opening the way towards difference and intensity. The third step focuses on what Deleuze calls ‘the ethics of intensive quantities’. In the Conclusion, I examine Deleuze's famous, almost cliché, definition of ethics as not being unworthy of the event and, through the empty form of time, I connect it to Kant's formalistic ethics. (shrink)

Tae Wan Kim, John Hooker, and Thomas Donaldson make an attempt, in recent articles, to solve the alignment problem. As they define the alignment problem, it is the issue of how to give AI systems moral intelligence. They contend that one might program machines with a version of Kantian ethics cast in deontic modal logic. On their view, machines can be aligned with human values if such machines obey principles of universalization and autonomy, as well as a deontic utilitarian principle. (...) Programming machines to do so might be useful, in their view, for applications such as future autonomous vehicles. Their proposal draws both on traditional logic-based and contemporary connectionist approaches, to fuse factual information with normative principles. I will argue that this approach makes demands of machines that go beyond what is currently feasible, and may extend past the limits of the possible for AI. I also argue that a deontological ethics for machines should place greater stress on the formula of humanity of the Kantian categorical imperative. On this principle, one ought never treat a person as a mere means. Recognition of what makes a person a person requires ethical insight. Similar insight is needed to tell treatment as a means from treatment as a mere means. The resources in Kim, Hooker, and Donaldson’s approach is insufficient for this reason. Hesitation regarding deployment of autonomous machines is warranted in light of these alignment concerns. (shrink)

In this paper the author considers a number of objections to the views he expressed in "kant's examples of the first formulation of the categorical imperative" ("the philosophical quarterly", Volume 7, Number 26, January, 1973) by professor kemp in "kant's examples of the categorical imperative" ("the philosophical quarterly", Volume 8, Number 30, January, 1957) and does what he can to reply to them.

The categorical imperative can be construed as a universalization test for moral permissibility. False negatives of the categorical imperative would be maxims failing this test, despite the permissibility of their actions; maxims like: ‘I’ll withdraw all my savings on April 15th’. Examples of purported false negatives familiar from the literature can be grouped into three general categories, and dispatched by applying category-specific methods for proper formulation of their maxims, or for proper testing. Methods for reformulating failing (...) maxims, such as the addition of appropriate conditional clauses, do not generate false-positive counterexamples in other instances. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relationship between the principle of right and the principle of morals [Sitten] in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. My interpretation denies that the principle of right is derived from the categorical imperative, but neither does it adhere to the independence thesis. I present a third way of understanding the relationship between the law of right and the universal law of morals: the latter is needed in order to formulate the former, but it is (...) not sufficient. The principle of right is obtained by applying the categorical imperative to the concept of right. I highlight the discussion on the subject within the late eighteenth-century German natural law tradition and similar arguments found in Achenwall. (shrink)

Naturalism, as Binmore understands the term, is characterized by a scientific stance on moral behavior. Binmore claims that a naturalistic account of morality necessarily goes with the conviction “that only hypothetical imperatives make any sense”. In this paper it is argued that this claim is mistaken. First, as Hume’s theory of promising shows, naturalism in the sense of Binmore is very well compatible with acknowledging the importance of categorical imperatives in moral practice. Moreover, second, if Binmore’s own theory of (...) moral practice and its evolution is correct, then the actual moral practice does-and in fact must-incorporate norms, which have the form of a categorical imperative. Categorical imperatives are part of social reality and, therefore, any (normative) moral theory that adequately reflects moral practice must also include categorical imperatives. (shrink)

This chapter considers the centrality of principles in Kant’s moral philosophy, their distinctively ‘Kantian’ character, why Kant presents a ‘metaphysical’ system of moral principles and how these ‘formal’ principles are to be used in practice. These points are central to how Kant thinks pure reason can be practical. These features have often puzzled Anglophone readers, in part due to focusing on Kant’s Groundwork, to the neglect of his later works in moral philosophy, in which the theoretical preliminaries of that first (...) essay are properly articulated. In part, however, these puzzles stem, directly or indirectly, from Kant’s opposition to moral empiricism, which is bound to puzzle Anglophone readers, whose default orientation is empiricist. Accordingly, particular attention is paid to Kant’s reasons for rejecting moral empiricism and for developing an alternative to it, to Kant’s account of how his universalization tests serve as criteria of morally obligatory, permissible or prohibited actions and to his account of what is morally wrong with actions which violate those criteria. Examining these points provides a compelling synopsis of Kant’s system of moral principles, centring on the key terms ‘practical reason’, ‘law’, ‘maxim’ and ‘Categorical Imperative’. (shrink)

This article offers a new interpretation of Adorno’s new categorical imperative : it suggests that the new imperative is an important element of Adorno’s moral philosophy and at the same time runs counter to some of its essential features. It is suggested that Adorno’s moral philosophy leads to two aporiae, which create an impasse that the new categorical imperative attempts to circumvent. The first aporia results from the tension between Adorno’s acknowledgement that praxis is an (...) essential part of moral philosophy, and his view according to which existing social conditions make it impossible for moral knowledge to be translated into right action. The second aporia results from the tension between the uncompromising sensitivity to suffering that underlies Adorno’s moral thought, and his analysis of the culture industry mechanisms which turn people into happy, satisfied customers—an incompatibility which threatens to pull the rug out from under Adorno’s moral philosophy. My interpretation of the new categorical imperative focuses on two characteristics it inherits from the old, Kantian one—self-evidence and unconditionality—in order to present the new imperative as a response to these two aporiae. (shrink)

Ryan Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. This series of papers meets this challenge by landscaping traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. The first paper established the challenge and set out autonomy in Aristotelian terms. (...) The present paper interprets Kantian moral theory on the basis of the preceding introduction, argues contra Tonkens that an engineer does not violate the categorical imperative in creating Kantian AMAs, and proposes that a Kantian AMA is not only a possible goal for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one. (shrink)

In this article, I examine anew the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and its contributions to educational theory. I make four claims. First, that Kant should be read as having the Categorical Imperative develop out of subjective maxims. Second, that moral self-perfection is the aim of moral education. Third, that moral self-perfection develops by children habituating the results of their moral maxims in scenarios and cases. Fourth, that character and culture, Kant’s highest aims for humanity, are the ultimate (...) beneficiaries of this process. (shrink)

Abstract:Recently, the idea that every hypothetical imperative must somehow be ‘backed up’ by a prior categorical imperative has gained a certain influence among Kant interpreters and ethicists influenced by Kant. Since instrumentalism is the position that holds that hypothetical imperatives can by themselves and without the aid of categorical imperatives explain all valid forms of practical reasoning, the influential idea amounts to a rejection of instrumentalism as internally incoherent. This paper argues against this prevailing view both (...) as an interpretation of Kant and as philosophical understanding of practical reason. In particular, it will be argued that many of the arguments that claim to show that hypothetical imperatives must be backed up by categorical imperatives mistakenly assume that the form of practical reasoning must itself occur as a premise within the reasoning. An alternative to this assumption will be offered. I will conclude that while instrumentalism may well be false, there is no reason to believe it is incoherent. (shrink)

In her new book, Patricia Kitcher supports Onora O'Neill's view that the categorical imperative is the highest principle of both practical and theoretical reason. I claim that neither O'Neill's original interpretation nor Kitcher's additional evidence in favour of it are convincing. At its core, this misconception of Kant's position consists in the identification of self-referential critique of reason with the concept of autonomy. It will be shown that the (Kant) of both practical and theoretical reason is not the (...) categorical imperative, but the reflective power of judgement, as Kant claims in the Critique of the Power of Judgement. (shrink)

This paper explores the relevance of Kant's categorical imperative to military ethics and the solution it suggests for improving the treatment of women in the military. The second formulation of the categorical imperative makes universal respect for humanity a moral requirement by asserting that one must always treat other people as means in themselves and never as merely means to an end. This principle is a promising guide for military ethics and can be reconciled with the (...) acts of violence required by war. This paper argues that it can also regulate soldiers? relations to each other and that it may contribute to reorienting military culture in a way that overcomes the biases against female military personnel. (shrink)

The Brave New World–style utilitarian dystopia is a familiar feature of the cultural landscape; Kantian dystopias are harder to come by, perhaps because, until Rawls, Kantian morality presented itself as a primarily personal rather than political program. This asymmetry is peculiar for formal reasons, because one phase of the deliberative process on which Kant insists is to ask what the world at large would be like if everyone did whatever it is one is thinking of doing. I do not propose (...) to write a Kantian Brave New World myself, but I am going to ask, of what these days is called “the CI-procedure,” what would happen if everybody followed it. I will argue that if the CI-procedure works as advertised, it exposes a practical incoherence in the commitment to having it govern one’s actions: in the Kantian vocabulary that goes with the territory, that the Categorical Imperative gives rise to a contradiction in the will. (shrink)