Can Kant be defended in his attempt to make the foundations of morality independent of human feelings and inclinations?
Kant’s attempt to lay the foundations of morality based on rules of logic, i.e. a priori without recourse to empiricism, human feelings and inclinations, is an ambitious one. In doing so, he elevates moral truths to near mathematical truths. Just like mathematical truths depend on axioms, i.e., assumptions which are not proved but are reasonable, Kant’s moral truths, too, are based on ‘reasonable’ principles: of universality, the view of the humanity as an end in itself, and of the rational will as a universally self-legislating will. And just like mathematical logic has found powerful application in the natural sciences (Read: The unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics in the natural sciences), the question here can be reframed as thus: Does Kant’s moral logic also has powerful application in the field of ethics? Or has it, in leaving out human feelings and inclinations, missed out a central core element to be of any real value? I argue that Kant’s foundation of morality, in their strictly rational grounds, unmuddled by human sentiments, can help in resolving many ethical dilemmas, and thus holds an important place in the discourse on morality. Though the theory has it’s limitations, the criticisms which argue for the inclusion of human feelings are mostly straw man arguments which can be tackled without losing the crux. The real criticisms lie elsewhere.
I would not summarise or reiterate Kant’s formulation here, but just highlight some interesting areas where its rigorous rational approach is very useful.
Consider the ethical dilemma of donating money to a beggar. Is it moral? On one hand, we might be tempted towards donating, out of sympathy or compassion. On the other, voices of reason would tell us that by making him more dependent and legitimising his vocation, we are not solving the beggar’s problem. But incentivising or disincentivizing begging in one person doesn’t solve or accentuate the problem. It is like a drop in the ocean.
What might Kant say? Does the imperative “Do not give money to a beggar if he seems to be in a condition where he can help himself” pass Kant’s test of a moral law. The universality required of our moral law would entail that no one help beggars who can help themselves. Is it in line without our goal of solving the beggar’s problem? It would help, since if no one is helping beggars, either they would employ themselves in some other vocation, or impel the state to take action to improve employment. This would satisfy an important principle according to Kant - the advancement of rational beings as an end in itself. On the other hand, if we donate money to a beggar to satisfy our feelings and inclinations, we’d be using him merely as a means, and might not be helping his end, i.e. self sufficient prosperity. It is a tricky affair, but the Kantian framework throws a whole new light on the problem.
The real power of Kantian morality comes in the game of ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, in which two prisoners have been arrested and placed in separate cells. “You may choose to confess or remain silent. If you confess and your accomplice remains silent I will drop all charges against you and use your testimony to ensure that your accomplice does serious time. Likewise, if your accomplice confesses while you remain silent, they will go free while you do the time. If you both confess I get two convictions, but I'll see to it that you both get early parole. If you both remain silent, I'll have to settle for token sentences on firearms possession charges. If you wish to confess, you must leave a note with the jailer before my return tomorrow morning.” The dilemma faced by the prisoners is that, whatever the other does, each is better off confessing than remaining silent. If the other person confesses, I am better off confessing than remaining silent. If the other person remains silent, I am again better off confessing than remaining silent. But the outcome obtained when both confess is worse for each than the outcome they would have obtained. The game can be seen as an example of a tradeoff between individual and collective rationality, as a choice between selfish behaviour and socially desirable altruism, and has many real life counterparts, e.g., ethical dilemmas about climate change and pollution.
k A prisoner adhering to Kantian moral duty in the prisoner’s dilemma would remain silent and not defect, leading to the optimal outcome for both the participants. Kant’s foundation of mortality, devoid of any individual interests and inclinations, disregards the narrow self interested behaviour in favour of a socially desirable one. It imposes a kind of superrational morality which is in the best interests of all the players. But the real insight of Kant’s categorical imperative , in this case, is that the socially optimal outcome is borne out of an internal logic, a logic not governed by individual self interest, i.e. feelings and inclinations. To further add to this, real life experiments incorporating variants of the game have resulted in 37%-56% of prisoners cooperating. However, it must be remembered that Kant’s theory is normative, not descriptivist.
Kant’s attempt can be criticised on multiple grounds, but let us look at those which argue for the inclusion of human desires as a necessary prerequisite.
Hume believes that the world contains a natural state of affairs determined by cause and effect, which includes our sentiments, and our notions of morality stems from these, not on a priori reasoning. Thus there’s no such thing as moral duty determined by reason alone which motivates any action; indeed according to this view Kant not only put the cart before the horse, but neglects the horse altogether!
But the horse for Kant is something else: our free will, which exists in the noumenal world as opposed to the phenomenal one. Kant doesn’t deny the empirical world of cause and effect, but believes that we view the same world from a different standpoint as well, one in which our actions do not have causes but a rationale. Sentiments and desires are causes in the natural, phenomenal world, but they come only after the deliberations in the noumenal world, where moral reasoning takes place. With this distinction, Kant effectively separates morality from human feelings and inclinations without losing much. A A second criticism comes from Schopenhauer, whose doctrine held compassion central to all morality. “...the everyday phenomenon of compassion,…the immediate participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it…. Only insofar as an action has sprung from compassion does it have moral value; and every action resulting from any other motives has none.” [On the basis of Morality]. This runs in stark contrast to Kant, for whom an action had moral worth if and only if it stemmed from a respect of duty. Schopenhaur believed that Kant’s categorical imperative was founded on selfish egoism. But this is not so. Kant’s justification of leaving out empathy and compassion from morality is the contingent nature of these emotions; the same emotions can be, in different contexts, immoral as well. An assault victim refusing to use self defence out of empathy for the mental state of his assailant is not being moral. A state giving its economically poor citizen a right to stealing out of compassion for their sufferings is not being moral. Feelings themselves don’t encapsulate moral judgements, but a sense of duty borne out of rational considerations might do.
Phillipa Foot has argued that there’s no rationale for a person to adhere to moral judgements, and if one does so it can only be because of a respect for their normative aspect, coercion or individual feelings. Kant’s foundations, thus, are not independent of human feelings and inclinations. But in arguing that categorical imperatives don’t have an inherent reason-giving force, Foot neglects the internal logic of Kant’s principles. The rationale for a person to adhere to Kantian moral laws doesn’t come from a person’s own self interest, but from the consistency and the goodness of a rational will. If a rational person wills that he doesn’t adhere to a moral law, he commits himself (by the principle of universality) to accept that that no one adheres to that moral law, which in the case of Kantian moral laws would turn out to be self-defeating. For example, if I allow myself to make a deceitful promise to extricate myself from a difficult circumstance, I commit to allow everyone to do the same in similar circumstances, in which case the institution of promising would collapse or change in such a way that my deceitful promise would no longer serve the function I willed. Non-adherence to the moral law of not making a deceitful promise isn’t motivated by its normatively, coercion or sentiments, but follows from the laws of self-referential logic.
There are two issues at stake when we look at a theory of morality. One is it’s descriptive power: whether it adequately describes the moral dimension of our behaviour and the motivations behind it, and the other is it’s applicability: whether the theory has any prescriptions or applicability beyond strictly theoretical value. Kant himself admitted that his foundations of morality were never meant to describe actual motivations and actions - which are governed by all sorts of subjective inclinations and maxims. However, as a normative theory with its prescriptions, it holds tremendous value. Human emotions and feelings might be central in a descriptive theory, but certainly not on a normative one. Most of the criticisms following this line are shallow and are already taken care of within the Kantian framework. Thus, not only is Kant’s attempt to make the foundations of morality independent of human feelings and inclinations defensible, but also commendable.