In Section II, Kant starts from scratch and attempts to move from popular moral philosophy to a metaphysics of morals. Kant begins Section II of the Groundwork by criticizing attempts to begin moral evaluation with empirical observation. He states that even when we take ourselves to be behaving morally, we cannot be at all certain that we are purely motivated by duty and not by inclinations. Kant observes that humans are quite good at deceiving themselves when it comes to evaluating their motivations for acting, and therefore even in circumstances where individuals believe themselves to be acting from duty, it is possible they are acting merely in accordance with duty and are motivated by some contingent desire. However, the fact that we see ourselves as often falling short of what morality demands of us indicates we have some functional concept of the moral law.
Kant begins his new argument in Section II with some observations about rational willing. All things in nature must act according to laws, but only rational beings act in accordance with the representation of a law. In other words, only rational beings have the capacity to recognize and consult laws and principles in order to guide their actions. Thus, only rational creatures have practical reason. The laws and principles that rational agents consult yield imperatives, or rules that necessitate the will. For example, if a person wants to qualify for nationals in ultimate frisbee, he will recognize and consult the rules that tell him how to achieve this goal. These rules will provide him with imperatives that he must follow as long as he wants to qualify for nationals.
Imperatives
Imperatives are either hypothetical or categorical. Hypothetical imperatives provide the rules an agent must follow when he or she adopts a contingent end (an end based on desire or inclination). So, for example, if I want ice cream, I should go to the ice cream shop or make myself some ice cream. However, notice that this imperative only applies if I want ice cream. If I have no interest in ice cream, the imperative does not apply to me.
Kant posits that there are two types of hypothetical imperative—rules of skill and counsels of prudence. Rules of skill are determined by the particular ends we set and tell us what is necessary to achieve those particular ends. However, Kant observes that there is one end that we all share, namely our own happiness. Unfortunately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly what will make us happy or how to achieve the things that will make us happy. We can only know through experience what certain things will please us and even then, that could change over time. Therefore, Kant argues, we can at best have counsels of prudence, as opposed to outright rules.
Categorical Imperative: Laws of nature
Recall that the moral law, if it exists, must apply universally and necessarily. Therefore, a moral law could never rest on hypothetical imperatives, which only apply if one adopts some particular end. Rather, the imperative associated with the moral law must be a categorical imperative. The categorical imperative holds for all rational agents, regardless of whatever varying ends a person may have. If we could find it, the categorical imperative would provide us with the moral law.
What would the categorical imperative look like? We know that it could never be based on the particular ends that people adopt to give themselves rules of action. Kant believes that this leaves us with one remaining alternative, namely that the categorical imperative must be based on the notion of a law itself. Laws (or commands), by definition, apply universally. From this observation, Kant derives the categorical imperative, which requires that moral agents act only in a way that the principle of their will could become a universal law.[xi] The categorical imperative is a test of proposed maxims; it does not generate a list of duties on its own. The categorical imperative is Kant's general statement of the supreme principle of morality, but Kant goes on to provide three different formulations of this general statement.
The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature
The first formulation states that an action is only morally permissible if every agent could adopt the same principle of action without generating one of two kinds of contradiction. This is called the Formula for the Universal Law of Nature, which states that one should, “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.”[xi] A proposed maxim can fail to meet such requirement in one of two ways.
Contradiction in conception
First, one might encounter a scenario in which one's proposed maxim would become impossible in a world in which it is universalized. For example, suppose a person in need of money makes it his or her maxim to attain a loan by making a false promise to pay it back. If everyone followed this principle, nobody would trust another person when he or she made a promise, and the institution of promise-making would be destroyed. However, the maxim of making a false promise in order to attain a loan relies on the very institution of promise-making that universalizing this maxim destroys. Kant calls this a "contradiction in conception" because it is impossible to conceive of the maxim being universalized.[xii]
Contradiction in willing
Second, a maxim might fail by generating what Kant calls a "contradiction in willing."[xii] This sort of contradiction comes about when the universalized maxim contradicts something that rational agents necessarily will. For example, a person might have a maxim never to help others when they are in need. However, Kant thinks that all agents necessarily wish for the help of others from time to time. Therefore, it is impossible for the agent to will that his or her maxim be universally adopted. If an attempt to universalize a maxim results in a contradiction in conception, it violates what Kant calls a perfect duty. If it results in a contradiction in willing, it violates what Kant calls an imperfect duty. Perfect duties are negative duties, that is duties not to commit or engage in certain actions or activities (for example theft). Imperfect duties are positive duties, duties to commit or engage in certain actions or activities (for example, giving to charity).
In the Groundwork, Kant says that perfect duties never admit of exception for the sake of inclination,[xiii] which is sometimes taken to imply that imperfect duties do admit of exception for the sake of inclination. However, in a later work (The Metaphysics of Morals), Kant suggests that imperfect duties only allow for flexibility in how one chooses to fulfill them. Kant believes that we have perfect and imperfect duties both to ourselves and to others.
The Formula of Humanity
The second formulation of the categorical imperative is the Formula of Humanity, which Kant arrives at by considering the motivating ground of the categorical imperative. Because the moral law is necessary and universal, its motivating ground must have absolute worth.[xiv] Were we to find something with such absolute worth, an end in itself, that would be the only possible ground of a categorical imperative. Kant asserts that, “a human being and generally every rational being exists as an end in itself.”[xiv] The corresponding imperative, the Formula of Humanity, commands that “you use humanity, whether in your own persona or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”[xv] When we treat others merely as means to our discretionary ends, we violate a perfect duty. However, Kant thinks that we also have an imperfect duty to advance the end of humanity. For example, making a false promise to another person in order to achieve the end of getting some money treats their rational nature as a mere means to one's selfish end. This is, therefore, a violation of a perfect duty. By contrast, it is possible to fail to donate to charity without treating some other person as a mere means to an end, but in doing so we fail to advance the end of humanity, thereby violating an imperfect duty.
The Formula of Autonomy and the Kingdom of Ends
The Formula of Autonomy takes something important from both the Formula for the Universal Law of Nature and the Formula of Humanity. The Formula for the Universal Law of Nature involves thinking about your maxim as if it were an objective law, while the Formula of Humanity is more subjective and is concerned with how you are treating the person with whom you are interacting. The Formula of Autonomy combines the objectivity of the former with the subjectivity of the latter and suggests that the agent ask what he or she would accept as a universal law. To do this, he or she would test his or her maxims against the moral law that he or she has legislated. The Principle of Autonomy is, “the principle of every human will as a will universally legislating through all its maxims.”[xvi]
Kingdom of ends
Kant believes that the Formula of Autonomy yields another “fruitful concept,” the kingdom of ends. The kingdom of ends is the “systematic union” of all ends in themselves (rational agents) and the ends that they set. All ends that rational agents set have a price and can be exchanged for one another. Ends in themselves, however, have dignity and have no equivalent. In addition to being the basis for the Formula of Autonomy and the kingdom of ends, autonomy itself plays an important role in Kant's moral philosophy. Autonomy is the capacity to be the legislator of the moral law, in other words, to give the moral law to oneself. Autonomy is opposed to heteronomy, which consists of having one's will determined by forces alien to it. Because alien forces could only determine our actions contingently, Kant believes that autonomy is the only basis for a non-contingent moral law. It is in failing to see this distinction that Kant believes his predecessors have failed: their theories have all been heteronomous. At this point Kant has given us a picture of what a universal and necessary law would look like should it exist. However, he has yet to prove that it does exist, or, in other words, that it applies to us. That is the task of Section III.
