Kant’s Deontology, Research Paper Example

The Rationality of Ethics against the Empiricism of Ethics: Kant’s Deontology

Kant’s remarks in the opening of the second section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals clarifies what it means to advance an ethics grounded in practical reason. Such practical reason, according to Kant, is not to be mixed up with any empirical notions based upon how humans act in particular situations. As Kant writes: “our concept of duty…is by no means to be inferred from this that we have treated it as an experiential concept.” Rather, the practical aspect of reason is consistent with the universality of morality which Kant attempts to develop. If he would base his account of morality upon particular situations, Kant would lose the universal dimension of ethics that he feels is necessary to any ethics whatsoever. Namely, the danger of connecting the ethical to the experiential lies in the relativism of experienced situations. Ethics should not be based upon given situations, because situations always vary; instead, ethics should be the foundation from which we look at situations. Since this foundation is ethical, then situations will be conceived without exception in an ethical manner and obligations of duty will be clarified.

This argument is tied to Kant’s general transcendental philosophy. Kant tries to uncover the a priori conditions of possibility with which we perceive the world. (“Imannuel Kant”; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) These are conditions of possibility that allow for us to experience phenomena, as opposed to these phenomena determining what we experience. We cannot step beyond these a priori conditions, such that they serve as a foundation for everything we know. Kant’s ethical argument in this section is based upon the same form as his account of reason. Duty in its ethical sense simply refers to the a priori conditions of possibility with which we perceive a given situation. As Kant writes, our acts must be “done from duty and thus has a moral worth.” This means that morality does not arise from situations, but instead we examine a situation morally from the a priori perspective. Following Kant’s thoughts about reason, ethics can become a universal framework, since the conditions of possibility for reason do not vary from one person for another. If ethics has the same transcendental structure as reason, that is to say, if ethics essentially is reason, then there is no longer any ethical conflict about what is to be done. From this perspective, we can therefore reach a universal ethics that is applicable to all and just for all.

Hence, Kant is above all against relativizing ethics in this paragraph, as such relativization is the death of ethics itself. Kant writes: “if we attend to our experience of the behavior of human beings we meet frequent and, as we ourselves concedue, just complaints that that no reliable example can be cited of the disposition to act from pure duty.” (4:406) Ethics cannot be understood from a particular dimension, but only from a universal dimension. To particularize ethics would mean that the individual is more essential than these relationships. This leads to, as Kant notes, the consequence that ethics means “only to take care of the interest of inclinations, whether singly, or, at most, in their greatest compatibility with another.” (4:406) Ethics would collapse into either self-interest or a contract of a community of self-interests: this does not attain the level of universality Kant seeks to achieve, because one group’s self-interests may ultimately come at the expense of others.

Hence, to the extent that reason itself possesses a consistent “structure” that does not vary from human to human, i.e., all humans see the world through the a priori conditions of space and time, if ethics may be thought as rational, this would mean that there is no variance in ethical conduct. How to act ethically would merely be a duty, i.e., fulfilling the a priori ethical parameters which we are all given before any experience with the phenomena of the world. In other words, ethics as reason allows us to see possible ethical or unethical acts and then act accordingly.

The compelling aspect of Kant’s argument lies in its attack on empirical approaches. It would seem that any ethics worthy of its name should avoid privileged and particular worldviews. This particularity of ethics, as Kant realizes, implies the impossibility of ethics itself. By linking his account of ethics to reason, Kant is able to capture the necessary universality of ethics. However, this thesis ultimately holds only if this connection of ethics to reason can be made, and furthermore, that reason itself can be explained in terms of clearly defined a priori conditions of possibility. In other words, the truth of Kant’s ethics rests upon the truth of both his account of reason and the move to posit ethics in terms of reason.

Works Cited

Rohlf, Michael. “Imannuel Kant.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press, 2012.