Immanuel kant

Immanuel Kant’s Moral Philosophy
Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra

What is the purpose of this session?
Thursday, April 13, 2017© Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra2
 To have a brief idea of how moral thought has
developed over a period of time
 To understand Kant’s idea of rationality, morality and
freedom
 To understand the role of the Kantian individual in
the subsequent discourse in liberal political thought
 To scratch the soul of rationality, morality and
freedom
 To understand and dump or embrace the linkage
between morality, autonomy, freedom, responsibility
and dignity
 To get out of the class with lots of questions and the
thirst to seek some answers if not all

Caveat
 Kant's devoted servant, Lampe, is said to have
faithfully read each thing his master published, but
when Kant published his most important work, "The
Critique of Pure Reason," Lampe began but did not
finish it because, he said, if he were to finish it, it
would have to be in a mental hospital.
Many students since then have echoed his sentiments.

Teasers
 Are we determined to act or we have
a choice?
 Do we think before choosing or we
choose randomly?
 What is the motive that drives our
actions?
 What is the basis of choosing
between a competing set of
choices?
 Do the circumstances in which the
choice is exercised of certain
categories?
 Is choosing between Pepsi and
Coke the same as choosing between
lying or not lying?
 Is choosing between lying or not
lying the same as choosing between
whom to attend when your child is
terminally ill and your mother is
terminally ill?
 Do any of these circumstances
require a moral behaviour?
 Is there a law that the moral
behaviour should confirm to?
 What is the source of this law?
 Is any motivation required to confirm
to such a moral law?
 Can we imagine a world order
without any moral law?
 Is cheating wrong?
 Is lying wrong?
 Is infidelity wrong?
 Is taxation wrong?
 Is ascetism wrong?

Why study Philosophy
 Love of knowledge
 Love of the processes through which knowledge is
arrived at
 Capacity of critical enquiry
 Way of life – Mantra to lead life
Thursday, April 13, 20175 © Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra

Biographical Sketch

Why study Kant?
 Rationality
 Duty
 Moral Life
 Freedom and Individual Rights (American Revolution
– Thomas Paine)
 Justice (John Rawls)
 Liberal values (Libertarianism vs Communitarianism)
 Republicanism - Democracy
 Multiculturalism(Individual Rights and Group Rights)
What happens to culture based rights in the
emphasis on individual rights?

Kant and his times
 Middle Ages
 Renaissance
 Enlightenment
 The political philosophy of the enlightenment is the
unambiguous antecedent of modern Western liberalism:
 Secular
 Pluralistic
 Rule-of-law-based
 Emphasis on individual rights and freedoms
 Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment”

Kant and his times
What is Enlightenment
 Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred
tutelage.
 Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his
understanding without direction from another.
 Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own
reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment.
 Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind,
even after nature has freed them from alien guidance,
gladly remain immature
 For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but
freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the
things to which this term can properly be applied. It is the
freedom to make public use of one's reason at every
point.
 "Do we now live in an enlightened age?" the answer is,
"No ," but we do live in an age of enlightenment.

Kant’s Classification of Knowledge
Rational
Knowledge
Material
Laws of
Nature(Physics)
Natural
Philosophy
Laws of
Freedom(Ethic)
Moral
Philosophy
Formal
Logic

Kant’s Epistemology
 What exactly is knowledge?
 How is it arrived at?
 What are the processes involved?
 Who serves as a faculty of knowledge?
 If knowledge is taken as the given then what is it exactly
that we have knowledge of ?
 I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in
order to make room for faith.
 I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I
appear to myself.
 Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without
concepts are blind.
 The senses do not err — not because they always judge
rightly, but because they do not judge at all.

Rationalists and Empiricists
 Descartes – Cogito ergo sum
 Spinoza – God intoxicated
 Leibniz – Deus ex machina
 Locke – tabula rasa
 Berkeley – esse est percipi
 Hume - skepticism

 Critique of Pure Reason
 Knowledge is a product of the interaction between
the subject and the object

 A priori
 Knowledge absolutely independent of all experience
 Necessary
 Universal

 A posteriori
 Empirical knowledge, which is possible only a posteriori,
that is, through experience
 Contingent
 Circumstantial

 Analytic – Synthetic Judgements - An analytic
judgment is a form of identity relation, and while it
explicates, it does not add anything new to our
understanding of the object under investigation. A
synthetic judgment does.
 “In all judgments in which a relation between subject
and predicate is thought (I speak of affirmative
judgments only, the subsequent application to
negative ones being easily made), this relation is
possible in two ways. Either the predicate B belongs
to the subject A as something which is (covertly)
contained in the concept A; or B lies outside the
concept A, through connected with it. In the former
case I call the judgment analytic, in the

 Analytic Judgement - All bodies are extended.
 The concept of spatial extension is already there inherent in the
concept body, and there is no need to look beyond what is
already known a priori. So this judgment is analytic.
 Synthetic Judgement – All bodies are heavy.
 The predicate is something quite different from what I think in the
mere concept of a body in general.
 All empirical judgments are synthetic.
 “All bodies are heavy” is a synthetic a posteriori proposition. It
requires empirical experience of different bodies to
understand heaviness, so we are adding the new predicate to the
existing concept of a spatially extended body (which we already
knew a priori). The inclusion of a predicate not contained in the
concept being evaluated makes the judgment synthetic rather
than analytic.

 We can generally say that analytic judgments are
made on the basis of a priori knowledge, while
synthetic judgments are made on the basis of a
posteriori combined with a priori knowledge.
 “Now the real problem of pure reason is contained in
the question: How are synthetic judgments a
priori possible?”
 Judgments that have no a posteriori component at
all, yet still amplify our knowledge.

 Synthetic a priori judgements
 Everything that happens has its cause.
 7 + 5 = 12

Broad streams of morality
 Driven by consequences
 End justifies the means
 Utilitirianism (Bentham, Mill)
 Hedonism (Carvaka)
 Driven by morality itself
 Kant
 Gandhi
 Gita

Morality as we (mis)understand
 An honest cop – Shashi Kapoor A K Hangal in Deewar
 A conscientious Custom officer – Saaransh
 Honesty in one’s professional life
 Robin Hood
 Should you lie to save your friend’s life?
 Should you lie to save your friend from being rusticated from college? (3 Idiots, Scent of a woman)
 What would you do if your mother needs you at the hospital but your original plan was to attend an
event by a famous sportstar/popstar/theatre artist – one that you might not get another chance to
attend ever again? Would it matter if in place of your mother it is a distant relative or a mere
acquaintance?
 What would you do if you see a child in need of urgent medical help on the road having met an
accident and you are getting late for an important meeting with the CEO of your company? What
would be your decision if you are the CEO and you have called the meeting?
 What do you teach your child?
 Why shouldn’t (s)he lie?
 Why shouldn’t (s)he cheat?
 Why shouldn’t (s)he steal?
 Why shouldn’t (s)he not hit back his/her friends?
 Indulge in plagiarism?
 Continue being part of the unethical practices in a Company or quit the job?
 Whistle blower – Satyendra Nath Dubey, Manjunath
 What are the examples you give them – Gandhi, Lincoln, Sachin or Shobraj, Dawood Ibrahim or Osama Bin Laden?
 Casual, consensual sex?

Morality as we (mis)understand
 Continue being part of the unethical practices in a Company or
quit the job?
 What are the examples you give them – Gandhi, Lincoln, Sachin
or Shobraj, Dawood Ibrahim or Osama Bin Laden?

Source of Moral Law
 Is morality or moral law a given?
 Hobbesian State of Nature - Leviathan
 Social Contract theorists
 Rise of the Modern State

Source of Moral Law
 Morality as Obedience
 Religion/God/Church/Nature
 Heteronomy
 Morality as Self-governance/Rationality
 Individual as the source of Moral Law
 Autonomy
 Death of dogma is the birth of morality

Ancient Moral Law Theorists
 The highest good is a pre given(Teleological)
 What is the most rational way to true happiness or
the highest good?
 How virtuous conduct and the virtues as aspects of
character- the virtues of courage and temperance,
wisdom and justice , which are themselves good –
are related to that highest good, whether as means,
or as constituents, or both?

Modern Moral Law Theorists
 Is the right prior to the good?(Deontological)
 Primacy of reason
 What are the authoritative prescriptions of reason?

Modern Moral Law Theorists
 Is the moral order required of us derived from an
external source, or does it arise in some way from
human nature itself (as reason or feeling or both) and
from the requirement of our living together in society?
 Is the knowledge or awareness of how we are to act
directly accessible only to some, or to a few (the clergy,
say), or is it available to every person who is normally
reasonable and conscientious?
 Must we be persuaded or compelled to bring ourselves in
line with the requirement of morality by some external
motivation or are we so constituted that we have in our
nature sufficient motives to lead us to act as we ought
without the need of external inducements?

Brand Kant
 Absolutist
 Deontologist
 Anti-consequentialist
 Idealist

Kant’s works
 Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals
 Critique of Practical Reason
 Metaphysics of Morals
 Critique of Judgement

Kant’s Moral Law
 “…in presenting Kant’s moral philosophy, I have
played down the role of the a priori and the formal,
and I have given what some may think a flat reading
of the categorical imperative as a synthetic a priori
practical proposition. These things I have done
because I believe that the downplayed elements are
not at the heart of his doctrine. Emphasizing them
easily leads to empty and arid formalities, which no
one can accept and which we then erroneously
associate with his name. Rather, the heart of his
doctrine lies in his view of free constructive reason
and the idea of coherence that goes with it............. It
lies also in his further ideas, such as the idea of the
moral law as a law of freedom and the idea of
philosophy as the defense of reasonable faith”

Reason
Good Will
Duty
Reverence for the
Moral Law
Self-legislation,
Autonomy, Freedom
Categorical
Imperative
Kant’s Moral Law

Kant’s Moral Law
 What is reason?
 What is the good will?
 What is the relationship between good will and reason?
 What is it that pushes the good will to act?
 Sense of DUTY actualized though the UNIVERSAL LAW which
further is based on the CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
 What propels or rather further propels an individual to follow
this path or perform duty just for duty’s sake? REVERENCE
 Why should anyone have reverence for such a law? SELF
LEGISLATION, UNIVERSALITY
 What is the moral law?
 Why is it that we should be following the moral law?
 What is the incentive or what is the force propelling us to
follow it?
 Why are we motivated to act according to this moral law?

Kant’s Moral Law
Reason
 Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules
and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond
natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects.
Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires
trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to
progress from one level of insight to another.
 Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce
everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of
his animal existence, and that he should partake of no
other happiness or perfection than that which he himself,
independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.
 Reason creates for itself the idea of a spontaneity that
can, on its own, start to act–without, i.e., needing to be
preceded by another cause by means of which it is
determined to action in turn, according to the law of
causal connection

Kant’s Moral Law
Good Will
 It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the
world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good
without qualification, except a good will
 The very coolness of a scoundrel makes him not
merely more dangerous but also immediately more
abominable in our eyes than we should have taken
him to be without it
 The good will is the only thing “good without
limitation” (ohne Einschränkung)
 It would shine like a jewel for itself, as something
having its full worth in itself

Kant’s Moral Law
Duty
 A human action is morally good, not because it is done from
immediate inclination still less because it is done from self-interest
but because it is done for the sake of duty
 Duty is the practical unconditional necessity of action
 In speaking of actions done from duty, Kant says the will is at a
crossroads, as it were, between its principle a priori, which is formal,
and its incentive a posteriori, which is material
 Reason vs Passion
 Motive behind duty – happiness, sympathy, love, affection
 Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do so with pleasure.
 Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person.
To this the answer is given:
 Surely your only resource is to try to despise them entirely,
 And then with aversion do what your duty enjoins you.
 Duty for duty’s sake
 Shopkeeper example

Kant’s Moral Law
Duty for duty’s sake
 An action done from duty has its moral worth, not
from the results it attains or seeks to attain, but from
a formal principle or maxim – the principle of doing
one’s duty whatever that duty may be
 Comparison with Gita

Kant’s Moral Law
Reverence for the Moral Law
 What propels or rather further propels an individual
to follow this path or perform duty just for duty’s
sake?
 Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the
law. For an object as the effect of my proposed
action I can have an inclination, but never
reverence……because it is merely the effect, and
not the activity, of a will
 The object of reverence is the law alone – that law
which we impose on ourselves but yet as necessary
in itself ... All moral interest, so called, consists only
in reverence for the law

Kant’s Moral Law
 Why should anyone have reverence for such a law?
 Because it is self-imposed and the more important
one that – for no reason at all!
 Just for the sake of accepting it and following it
because after all it is the supreme principle of
morality, a principle that actualizes our freedom and
also because at the time it was willed, it was willed
as a universal law. “So, I ought never to act except in
such a way that I can also will that my maxim should
become a universal law”.
 Two things fill me with wonder, the starry sky above
and the moral law within

Kant’s Moral Law
 The starry heavens above me looks huge, infinite and
absolutely sublime, but it means nothing when compared
with my own value as a rational being considered as an
end in himself, which is revealed by the moral law ‘within
me’
 The second [the moral law within me], on the other
hand, infinitely elevates my value as an intelligence
through my personality, in which the moral law reveals to
me a life independent of animalism and even from the
entire world of our senses [the starry heavens], at least
as far as can be discerned from the purposeful
determination of my existence through this law, which
determination is not limited to conditions and boundaries
of this life, but rather goes out to infinity.
 Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave
the way to godliness.

Kant’s Moral Law
 What is the moral law all about?
 According to Kant nature and every thing that it
constitutes functions according to a law and the
same applies to will which acts in accordance with its
idea of a moral law – the supreme principle of
morality
 Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means
to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man
reason and the freedom of the will which depends
upon it is clear indication of her purpose. Man
accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not
nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge;
rather, he should bring forth everything out of his
own resources.

Kant’s Moral Law
Form of the Moral Law
 An idea of reason
 Applies to all reasonable and rational beings
 Universal
 Necessary
 Objective
 Non-contradictory

Kant’s Moral Law
 An action is hypothetically imperative or categorically
imperative
 Hypothetical imperative
 Subjective principle
 Instrumental Rationality (Pleasure and Pain –
Utilitarianism)
 Means to an End
 Synthetic a posteriori
 Categorical Imperative
 Objective principle
 An end in itself
 Apodeictic Practical Principle
 Synthetic a priori

Kant’s Moral Law
The Categorical Imperative
 Act only on that maxim through which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law.
 Act as if the maxim of your action were to become
through your will a universal law of nature.
 So act as to treat humanity, both in your own person
and in the person of every other, always at the same
time as an end, never simply as a means.
 So act as if your were always through your maxims a
law making member in a universal kingdom of ends.

Act only on that maxim through which you can at the

Act only on that maxim through which you can at the
 Example of lying
 Example of not honouring a promise

So act as to treat humanity, both in your own person and in the
person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never
simply as a means
 Man and in general every rational being, exists as a
mean for arbitrary use by this or that will: he must in
all his actions, whether they are directed to himself
or to other rational beings, always be viewed at the
same time as an end.
 Persons …….. are not merely subjective ends
whose existence as an effect of our actions has a
value for us: they are objective ends – that is , things
whose insistence in itself is an end, and indeed an
end such that in its place we can put no other end to
which they should serve simply as a means; for
unless this is so, nothing at all of absolute value
would be found anywhere.
 Example of suicide Thursday, April 13, 201746 © Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra

Kant’s Moral Law
 Why is it that we should be following the moral law?
 What is the incentive or what is the force propelling
us to follow it?
 Why are we motivated to act according to this moral
law?
 Acting according to the moral law confers dignity “….
Although in the concept of duty we think of
subjection to the law, yet we also at the same time
attribute to the person who fulfils also his duties a
certain sublimity and dignity”

Moral Law and Freedom
 Now I assert that every being who cannot act except
under the idea of freedom is by this alone—from a
practical point of view—really free: that is to say, for
him all the laws inseparably bound up with freedom
are valid just as much as if his will could be
pronounced free on grounds valid for theoretical
philosophy. . . . [W]e cannot possibly conceive of a
reason as being consciously directed from the
outside in regard to its judgments; for in that case
the subject would attribute the determinations of his
power of judgment not to his reason, but to an
impulsion. Reason must look upon itself as the
author of its own principles independently of alien
influence. Thus, as practical reason, or as the will of
a rational being, it must regard itself as free.Thursday, April 13, 201748 © Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra

 The moral law, which itself does not require a
justification, proves not merely the possibility of
freedom, but that it really belongs to beings who
recognize this law as binding on themselves.

 Four features that are unique to Kant’s theory of
freedom
 The individual, the human agency is absolutely central to
his conception of freedom and morality.
 Duty is an integral part of being free and moral and
consequently there is suggested a reconciliation between
freedom and responsibility.
 Rationality of the individual is a pre requisite of an
individuals freedom and morality.
 The individual in being free and moral participates in the
discovery of himself and simultaneously discovers the
other also giving rise to the ideal of human dignity.

Take away from Kant
 Respecting the individual – Man is the measure of all things
 Should your action be driven by the result it aims at or the
intrinsic worth of the same?
 Should you be driven by, say recognition, when you opt for a
particular profile or because you like the profile?
 Should you lead your life in a particular way because you are
concerned about what other’s will say about the way you lead
your life?
 Should you chose honesty? Why?
 Without fear or favour
 Should you think of levels of life or levels of being finally
dictating your pursuit in life?
 Can the centre of happiness lie within you and is that in the
ultimate sense being autonomous? (Aatm Deepo Bhav, Aham
Brahmasmi)

Food for thought
 Is everyone similarly able in as far as being autonomous is
concerned?
 Does Kant not imagine a very strong individual – one that we
encounter rarely in day to day life?
 What is Kant’s formula to choose between competing set of
duties?
 Is reason/rationality homogenous?
 What privileges the rationality of a normal human being to that
of a mad man?
 What privileges the rationality of a human being to that of
animals?
 If every rational being should necessarily be moral what
explains evil?
 Why is it that passion/inclination tends to be a more powerful
opponent against reason?
 Can there be a mechanism that automatically guides reason to
self actualization without any tussle with passion?

Let’s play morality?!
 An honest cop – Shashi Kapoor A K Hangal in Deewar
 A conscientious Custom officer – Saaransh
 Honesty in one’s professional life
 Robin Hood
 Should you lie to save your friend’s life?
 Should you lie to save your friend from being rusticated from college? (3 Idiots, Scent of a woman)
 What would you do if your mother needs you at the hospital but your original plan was to attend an
event by a famous sportstar/popstar/theatre artist – one that you might not get another chance to
attend ever again? Would it matter if in place of your mother it is a distant relative or a mere
acquaintance?
 What would you do if you see a child in need of urgent medical help on the road having met an
accident and you are getting late for an important meeting with the CEO of your company? What
would be your decision if you are the CEO and you have called the meeting?
 Continue being part of the unethical practices in a Company or quit the job?
 What are the examples you give them – Gandhi, Lincoln, Sachin or Shobraj, Dawood Ibrahim or Osama Bin Laden?
 Casual, consensual sex?

Let’s play morality?!
 Continue being part of the unethical practices in a Company or
quit the job?
 What are the examples you give them – Gandhi, Lincoln, Sachin
or Shobraj, Dawood Ibrahim or Osama Bin Laden?

Immanuel kant

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