This is the second of 3 posts on the approaches to justice that Michael Sandel outlines in his book Justice (as I understand it):
- Maximising welfare: Utilitarianism (Bentham and Mill)
- Respecting freedom: Libertarianism and deontology (Kant).
- Cultivating virtue: Virtue ethics (Aristotle)
Do only what you can want everyone to do
Immanuel Kant's deontology says that we should act in a way that is:
- moral: out of duty, not inclination
- free: governed by reason, not something external
- rational: out of a categorical, not hypothetical imperative
The original formulation of that categorical imperative:
Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
In another formulation (which amounts to the same thing):
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
So:
The ends do not justify the means. Motive over consequences.
What are the implications?
- We must not lie ever. Even to save the life of a loved one.
- Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is morally worthless.
- We must not make an exception for ourself (cheating "just this once"), it goes against universalisability.
- Killing innocents, making false promises, slavery, exploitation, coercion, and manipulation are always unjust, with no exceptions. Kant would not end a life to save many more.
Kant connects 3 ideas (by 3 contrasts):
- morality: duty v. inclination
- freedom: autonomy v. heteronomy
- reason: categorical v. hypothetical imperatives
Duty vs Inclination
A inexperienced grocer wants to buy bread. The shopkeeper could overcharge them. But he doesn’t, for fear that word might spread and hurt his business.
The shopkeeper does the right thing, but for self-interest (not the right reason). His action has no moral worth.
There is an important moral difference:
- Being principled: honesty for its own sake
- Being prudential: honesty for the sake of the bottom line.
Autonomy vs Heteronomy
Kant says you are free only when your will is determined autonomously, governed by a law you give yourself.
When my will is determined heteronomously, it is determined externally, from outside of me.
But if freedom means something more than following my desires and inclinations, how is it possible? Isn’t everything I do motivated by some desire or inclination determined from outside?
Kant says we are natural beings, i.e. part of nature. We are not exempt from the laws of nature, i.e. of physics, of cause and effect.
Kant argues that all action is governed by laws of some kind or other.
If we are capable of freedom, and are not just the same like a billiard ball whose actions are governed solely by the laws of physics, then there must be such a law which governs our actions and which we give ourselves.
This law comes from reason.
We are not just sentient beings (governed by pleasure and pain from our senses), but also rational beings, capable of reason.
If reason determines my will, then the will becomes the power to choose independent of the dictates of nature or inclination.
I am able to act freely (in a Kantian sense) because reason can govern my will.
For the empiricists, including the utilitarian philosphers, reason is instrumental: it enables us to identify means for the pursuit of certain ends - ends that reason itself does not provide.
Thomas Hobbes called reason the "scout for the desires.":
For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the things desired,
David Hume called reason the "slave of the passions.:
... reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.
Kant rejects this subordinate role of reason. If it were the case, Kant says we're better off with just instinct.
Kant's idea of reason is one that legislates a priori, regardless of empirical ends.
Categorical vs Hypothetical Imperatives
Reason can govern the will in two ways. in other words there are two kinds of imperatives:
Hypothetical: if you want X, do Y.
- Conditional, not without exception
- depends on or refers to another purpose
- uses instrumental reason
- action would be good solely as a means to something else
- cannot qualify as an imperativefor morality
Categorical: just do Y.
- Unconditional, without loophole or exception
- does not depend on or refer to another purpose
- uses pure reason that legislates a priori
- action would be good in itself
- can qualify as an imperative for morality
- To be free in the sense of autonomous requires that I act not out of a hypothetical imperative but out of a categorical imperative.
The categorical imperative vs the Golden Rule
This sounds like the Golden Rule... but it isn't.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Sandel says no. The Golden Rule depends on contingent facts about how people would like to be treated. The categorical imperative requires that we abstract from such contingencies and respect persons as rational beings, regardless of what they might want.
Example: your brother has died and your frail mother asks you about him. Do you tell her the truth?
The Golden Rule would ask how I would feel if I were my mother. Of course, this is contingent. Some people want blissful ignorance, others the painful truth.
For Kant, this is the wrong question, and it should be how do I not treat my mother as a means to her own contentment?
Kant's answer would be to respect my mother as a rational being, and tell her the truth.
Kant against utilitarianism
Kant thinks it's wrong to derive moral principles from the desires we happen to have:
- People's interests, wants, desires, and preferences change, so can't serve as the basis of a universal moral principles.
- Making someone happy is not the same as making someone good/virtuous.
Kant against libertarianism
Kant says we are not at our own disposal. In stark contrast to libertarian notions of self-ownership, Kant insists that we do not own ourselves.
Man cannot dispose over himself because he is not a thing; he is not his own property.
Next up
Towards the end of Justice, Sandel goes into another approach to justice in the form of Aristotelian virtue ethics.