Kantian Deontology, Essay Example

Immanuel Kant believes that a good will- and not the ends which a person strives to achieve with this will- achieves its own worth through mere existence; he goes on to explain that reason should not be encumbered by practicality or by the human ability to reason, which is easily led, subjective, and fallible. (7-9) Thus, Kant concludes that man’s natural state is one of purity and higher morality- free of the evils of good wills applied to misconceptions. Interestingly, Kant also distinguishes between duty from duty and from self-serving inclinations. (11) He emphasizes this difference by stating that duty from duty should be obeyed out of respect for the laws which have been imposed over personal inclinations. (14) These duties comprise incumbent actions and knowledge which affect-if not concern- each person as a member of a greater system. (16-18) As such, immorality can consist of suicide or murder, false promises, the withholding of beneficent talents, and hording wealth rather than aiding with it. Kant himself admits that the first principles convey abstract and universal generalizations, so he presents examples which condemn actions which oppose duty, actions which are done in self-interest, and actions which a person might independently choose to do, taking away the selflessness of the act. In the Evaluation, Kant’s lauded principles are discussed.

Evaluation

If a good will is all that Kant requires for higher morality, then clearly some animals have attained equal status with humans. Would the benevolent hares not be even better than humans since they have only the most basic of skills for reasoning? This stance overlooks the fact that nature itself can still be quite brutal. Although most animals typically kill primarily for survival, nature also equips some creatures with a good will and torturous weapons. For example, some snake venoms take hours or even days to put the prey out of its misery. In the human dog-eat-dog world, even duty from duty can be tyrannical. Multitudes of combatants have fought in battles for their nation’s best interests—regardless of their personal feelings about the reasons for the conflict. Kant seems to indicate that being tricked from duty, such as national loyalty, is morally justifiable while condemning the smaller daily deceits which a person can convince himself of.

Personal interest may not be the soundest basis for morality, but neither is any interest which demands so much trust and unquestioning obedience. Perhaps a happy medium could be reached if Kant’s duty from duty extended to include the expression of the self-serving inclinations- if for no other reasons, to achieve a cathartic release and to provide a more diverse body of criticisms by which the worth of the chosen duty can be measured. Duty is a representative commandment of the will of certain person(s), making it part of the potential evil of reason which Kant criticizes in this book. Kant does recognize this in a limited way, citing an example that if “an unfortunate man… wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it, not from inclination or fear but from duty, then his maxim has moral content.” (11) No doubt in a utopian society the duty-spared few would make their vital contributions to the society as a whole. Kant is vague regarding whether the future social contributions of the unfortunate man or the moral contributions which duty makes to the collective social morale, the ‘beneficence’ which Kant put forward as an example of the positive potential of empathy. (11)

Conclusion

Kant’s ideas of good will and duty are extremely complex and not to be taken lightly. He makes new points in a way that is persuasive. However, as with any philosophical standpoint, the elaboration which clarifies a moral perspective also obstructs the transcendent meaning of the example given. Particularly, Kant’s separation of duty and reason allows the instinctive nature of leadership to persevere as an agent of the good will free of the self-driven motives which his theories attribute to the individualistic desires. This book reminded me of the pure theory of socialism: big-picture-thinking, selfless, noble, utopian, and absolutely bound to fail. The harsh drive of power might begin the process of the collapse of such a beneficent society, and the acquiescence which Kant recommends would soon turn to domination over the weaker beings. Only the strong and hardened survive. Their quality of life may never be as fulfilling as in the example of the unfortunate man who continues working every day to see his part in the society through, whereas the pursuit of individual drives often includes the emotional price of failure or the short-term emotional gains of triumph. Despite these concerns, Kant’s theories of duty and system-wide thinking highlight the importance of the balance between autonomy and freedom.

Works Cited

Kant, Immanuel. Groundworks of the Metaphysics of Morals. 1998. Cambridge University Press. Print.