Student Assignment: Four Moral Problems from Kant’s Ethics
Philosophy 101: Dr. William O’Meara
Your written assignment: In outline form, about 100-150 words for each problem: For each problem, 1 through 4, outline your answers:
(a) What would you do in the problem?
(b) What is the basic value, principle, or reason on which you base your solution of the problem?
(c) Whether or not you agreed with Kant’s solution, did you find your basic value, principle, or reason similar to the basic value or principle which Kant used?
(d) Does Kant use his principle of the value of humanity negatively, that is, as a value not to be harmed, or positively, as a value to be advanced, in his solution of the problem. (A negative application affirms that an action is wrong because it harms someone. A positive application affirms that an action is right because it helps someone.) Explain your answer briefly.
Four Moral Problems from Kant with his Answers after the Four Problems
1. A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life.
2. Another finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. He knows that he will not be able to repay it, but sees also that nothing will be lent to him, unless he promises stoutly to repay it in a definite time. He desires to make this promise, but he wonders if it is consistent with his moral duty.
3. A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances, and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty.
4. A fourth, who is in prosperity, while he sees that others have to contend with great wretchedness and that he could help them, thinks: What concern is it of mine? Let every one be as happy as heaven pleases, or as he can make himself; I will take nothing from him nor even envy him, only I do not wish to contribute anything to his welfare or to his assistance in distress! He asks himself if this attitude of his is consistent with his duty.
Kant’s Answers to the Problems
1. In the case of the proposed act of suicide, the proposed guideline is that an individual out of self-love should adopt the principle of ending his life when its continued existence is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. The proposed guideline is that an individual should commit suicide when happiness can no longer be attained. Kant argues that this guideline cannot become universal law of nature. For a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself and therefore could not exist as a system of nature. Hence that maxim could not be universalized without a contradiction and is therefore immoral.
Kant also argues that he who contemplates suicide should ask himself whether has action can be consistent with the idea of humanity as an end in itself. If he destroys himself in order to escape from painful circumstances, he uses a person merely as a means to maintain a tolerable condition up to the end of life. But a man is not a thing, that is to say, something which can be used merely as a means, but must in all his actions be always considered as an end in himself. A person should not, therefore, dispose in any way of a person even on one’s own person so as to mutilate him, to damage or kill him. (It belongs to ethics to define this principle more precisely so as to avoid all misunderstanding, for exposing my life to danger with a view to preserve my own Rife or to save someone else’s life is morally right.)
2. In the case of the need to borrow money, the proposed guideline is: When I think myself in want of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know that I can never do so. Now this principle of self-love may be consistent with my whole future welfare since I may never be caught. But to find out if the proposed guideline is morally right, I should ask if the guideline could be universalized, could be made into a universal law. The answer is that it cannot. For if it should be a universal law that everyone when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise whatever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself would become Impossible. For no one would consider anything was really being promised when anyone attempted to make a promise. If we universalized the making of false promises, promises would be useless.
Kant also argues that one who is thinking of making a false promise to others should easily be able to see that he would be using others merely as a means without respecting others as valuable in their own right. This violation of the principle of humanity as an end in itself is very obvious if we take in examples of attacks on the freedom and property of others. For then it is clear that he who transgresses the rights of others intends to use the person of others merely as means, without considering that as rational beings they ought always to be esteemed also as ends, that is, as beings whose own dignity must be taken into account in their relationships.
3. In the case of the man with the talent who proposes the maxim that he need not take any pains to develop his ability, Kant argues that such a maxim should not be universalized. He states that a system of nature could indeed subsist with a universal maxim or law that talents need not be developed. If people want to be like the South Sea islanders who let their talents rust and who would devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement and propagation of their species, nature could possibly survive such a universal law. But Kant does not believe that a rational being could possibly will that there be such a universal law. For as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be devoted, since they serve him, and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes.
Kant also argues that it is not enough that the proposed action does not violate humanity in our own person as an end in itself, it must also harmonize with it. Now there are in humanity capacities of greater perfection, which belong to the end that nature has in view in regard to humanity in ourselves as the subject: to neglect these might perhaps be consistent with the maintenance of humanity as an end in itself, but not with the advancement of this end.
4. The proposed maxim of the will in this fourth case is that an individual need not help others in distress. Kant says that if such a mode of thinking were a universal law, the human race might very well subsist, and doubtless even better than in a state in which every one talks of sympathy and good-will, or even takes care occasionally to put it into practice, but on the other side, also cheats when he can, betrays the rights of men, or otherwise violates them. But although it is possible that a universal law of nature might exist in accordance with that maxim, it is impossible to will that such a principle should have the universal validity of a law of nature. For a will which resolved this would contradict itself, inasmuch as many cases might occur in which one would have need of the love and sympathy of others, and in which, by such a law of nature, sprung from has own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he desires.
Kant also notes that humanity might indeed survive even though no one should contribute anything to the happiness of others. However, such a state of affairs would only harmonize negatively, not positively, with humanity as An end in itself if every one does not also endeavour, as far as in him lies, to forward the ends of others. For the ends of any subject which is an end in himself, ought as far as possible to be my ends also,, if that conception is to have its full effect with me.
(This principle, that humanity and generally every rational nature is an end in itself is not borrowed from experience, Kant claims, because of two reasons: First, the value of rational being is universal, applying to all rational beings whatever; and inductive generalization cannot establish such true universal values. Secondly, the value of rational beings does not present humanity as an end to men subjectively, that is, as an object which men do of themselves actually adopt as an end. Rather, the value of rational beings is an objective end, a value which must be the law constituting the supreme limiting condition of all our subjective aims and desires. The value of humanity, of a rational being, as an end in itself is not derived from the experiential desires and choices of humans; rather it is not derived from pure reason alone, from the very concept or nature of a rational being. That is Kant’s argument.)
In the second lecture on Kant’s ethics, I offer an evaluation of his view that the value of a rational being is based on reason alone, not on emotion and choice.
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