I’m really glad that I finally got the chance to study Kant. It was the first thing I had read in a long time that truly stopped my brain. You can’t just say you disagree with something he says—his arguments are nearly impossible to argue with logically. I like to think that I am, more often than not, a moral person. But Kant’s categorical imperative makes that tougher to claim.
According to him, moral actions are only those whose maxim you can will to be universal law, those that treat people not only as means but also as ends, and to act only in such a way that the maxim of your actions would be adopted as a universal law in a kingdom of ends. This puts a huge amount of pressure on every action I take.
Originally, I took issue with the categorical imperative because it meant that a lot of the things I do are, according to Kant, immoral. And that bothered me. Lying to protect people seems like a good thing to me, but on reflection I realized it’s not really rational. What if I needed to find out what was true, and someone I would consider immoral lied to protect them? How could I judge them for that? I can only judge them if my morals are absolute, and the categorical makes them so in a way that is more appealing to me than I initially assumed.
The categorical imperative makes every action we take that much more meaningful. If we are trying to act in a way that we can will all of humanity to act in without negating reality/logic altogether, we are making a decision much greater than whether to lie just this one time. And if and when we do decide to lie, the decision has that much greater of force, because we are really choosing to do something despite its illogic. I don’t know if that means that emotion has necessarily overpowered logic in these scenarios (though that is definitely not what Kant would suggest), or if it simply means our immoral decisions are that much more immoral, but I think it brings a greater weight to our decisions.
Do you all think it’s a stretch to say that the categorical imperative gives greater meaning to the things we do? It obviously holds us to a higher standard, but do you think it makes things mean more, no matter which action we choose?
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I see no reason to act via the categorical imperative because I honestly don't really think Kant's vision of the Kingdom of Ends is possible. Human beings are by nature irrational, no matter how one teaches the imperative we will always act on instict in many cases instead of running all of our actions through a mental filter that determines what is the correct response via the categorical imperative. And as we've seen in class the imperatives sometimes contradict each other. What are we to do in such a situation? Is there a tier ranking for responses? If the outcome is always unkwown, you might as well just act how you want.
ReplyDeleteI feel like any theory that makes you consider your options makes your actions all the more important, even if the results of your decisions remain mostly unchanged. Even by considering the moral alternatives of you decisions, you start to become a more moral person. However, I do feel that the categorical imperative has its flaws. I feel like hypothetical imperatives are move valuable as far as building moral value and making actual decisions go, because they take into consideration specific situations and factors pertinent only to those situations.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in that an objective system of morality is the most logical and almost certainly the most fair. The advantage is that everyone can be held accountable by the same standards, and under Kant's system, has the ability to reason the correct decision in any situation.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I would say that the categorical imperative gives more meaning to our actions any more than a subjective system of ethics or morality, unless by that you mean that it forces one to more critically analyze each decision as he or she makes it.