CHAPTER II

CRITIQUE OF KANT (_Continued_)

I now proceed to the second point of criticism, which strikes at the heart of Kant’s ethics. Man according to Kant is worth while on his own account (an end _per se_), never to be used as a mere tool or thing. He is a person, an object towards whom we are bound to evince absolute respect. Yet Kant immediately goes on to say that there is no object in all the world, neither man nor any other, that is worth while on its own account, that deserves such respect. Kant’s views of actual human nature are tinged with somber pessimism. (Compare the chapter on Radical Evil in his _Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason_.) A strange paradox is thus presented to us. Man is to be accepted as a worth while object, and yet there is no worth while object. How does Kant seek to escape from this predicament? He says, not the man primarily, but something that happens in the man, is supremely significant: certain acts are worth while on their own account,—the agent only in so far as he performs such acts (or, let us add with a sigh, as he tries to perform them)—namely, acts which have as their sole motive respect for universal law. Then he informs us that similar processes occur in other agents, in fellow human beings, or, more precisely, that these others are capable of trying to act as I myself feel bound to try to act. Consider how far fetched is the argument, on what wavering foundations has been placed the ethical pronouncement of human worth and human equality in which our interest is so profoundly engaged. We do wish to be assured of this cardinal truth. No other truth is practically and theoretically of greater importance. As against the iniquitous practices of the world, as against the exploitation of labor, as against the degradation of woman, as against political tyranny whether exercised by kings or by mobs, we raise up for our shield the indefeasible worth of men—not of some men but of all men. And now, behold! the thinker to whom we owe the forcible expression of this truth seems to have left it in the air. I scrutinize my neighbors, and find in their behavior no sure sign of real worth. I fall back on myself and I discover what? The idea of an act which, if I could perform it, would stand on its own merits (would be self-justified). I then find that I am bound to try to perform such acts. I cannot affirm that in a single instance I have ever performed such an act. I next infer—on what tenuous ground has been shown in the last chapter—that my fellow-beings have the same inner experience as mine. And it is for this reason that by a circuitous inference I declare them to be worth while objects.

That Kant has formulated a truth of the utmost importance for mankind (that no man is to be treated as a mere tool), seems to me incontestable. That he has not made good his own proposition is my contention, and that the whole problem must therefore be taken up _de novo_. It will assist us in doing so to expose the flaw in his categorical imperative, or the formal principle of universality and necessity applied to human actions, which in his view imprints upon them the character of absolute rightness.

Note that Kant approaches the problems of ethics from the side of physical science, and with the bias of the physical scientist. The ethical principle he sets up, the bare idea of universal necessity or of law in general, is derived by way of abstraction from the particular laws of nature. It is a physical principle in disguise. To understand Kant’s system, it is simply indispensable to keep this point in mind. He was pre-occupied during the major portion of his life with profound speculations on scientific subjects. The title of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ might not be inappropriately changed into “A treatise on the fundamental assumptions of science, as handled by Newton and his successors.” He was undeniably interested in ethics. His ultimate aim was to clear the way for the confident holding of ethical principles. (See the Preface to the _Critique of Pure Reason_.) But he could not divest himself of the prejudice of his temperament and of his lifelong pursuit. He is not singular in this respect. To borrow the first principle of ethics from some other field is a common and apparently ineradicable error. Mechanics, æsthetics, and recently biology, have been laid under contribution for this purpose. A consistent attempt to study ethical phenomena on their own ground, to mark off what is really distinctive in the data of ethical experience, and then to search for some principle which shall serve to give a coherent account of them, has to my knowledge never yet been undertaken. Always ethics has been treated as an annex to some other discipline. Always we behold the attempt to assimilate before the distinctive traits and characteristics have been carefully investigated. Never yet has the independence of this wonderful aspect of human nature been truly acknowledged. Kant indeed freed ethics from its long tutelage to theology; but he left it still in subjection, subject to his own favorite study, physical science.

But though the notion of necessity, together with that of universality, which he derived from physics was employed by him as a fundamental principle of rightness in conduct, the principle itself insensibly, and as it would seem unbeknown to himself, underwent a remarkable change in the course of his undertaking to give it a new application. The following brief comments will serve to elucidate this point.

In physics, whenever an antecedent phenomenon has been exactly described, and a sequent phenomenon is defined in the same fashion, the connection is pronounced to be necessary—as for instance the transformation of mechanical energy into heat, and conversely. A single carefully guarded experiment may suffice to establish the necessary nexus between two phenomena. And after having established the necessity, we are confident of the universality. If exceptions should occur and contravene the supposed law, the calculations or the observations are to be corrected. But never in physical science do we start from universality and predict necessity therefrom. Kant in his ethics invariably couples together the two terms Universal and Necessary. But he reverses the procedure of science, he _begins with the universality and thereupon affirms the necessity_.

Universality is for him the test of moral necessity. If an act can be universalized, the performance of it, according to him, is morally necessary. For instance, the question is asked, Is it right to kill? Look at the act of killing, says Kant, and see whether it can be universalized, that is to say, whether if everybody felt at liberty to kill, the act of the murderer would or would not be self-defeating? He kills in order to affirm his life at the expense of another’s. If his action were to be generally imitated, his own life would be forfeit, or at least in danger, and he would be annulling what he intends to affirm. Hence murder is morally wrong: to sacredly respect the life of others is right.

But not only is the order reversed, so that necessity follows on the heels of universality, but the very meaning of the term necessity is altered. _A logical necessity is substituted for a physical necessity._ The idea of necessity as handled by physical science denotes the connection between one thing and something else. It is not the thing itself but its relation to some other thing that is necessary. It is not the phenomenon A nor the phenomenon B, in the case of a cause and its effect, that is declared to be necessary, but the sequence of B on A, the circumstance that B is tied up to A, must follow in its wake. But the term Necessity as used by Kant in his _Ethics_, denotes a relation of a thing to itself. It is in fact equivalent to self-consistency, which is a logical notion derived from the principle of self-identity. A is A, and it is not thinkable that it should be non-A. Similarly Kant says: If a man desires to affirm his life, that is, to be self-preserving, it is not thinkable, it would not be rational or logical on his part, to perform an act which would be self-defeating. Kant does not say that a man might not irrationally take another man’s life, regardless of the consequences to himself; he says that as a rational intelligence acting on purely logical motives he could not do so.[21] To repeat, then, physical necessity is a relation of one thing to another thing: the logical necessity involved in self-consistency is a relation of a thing to itself.

My next contention, and this touches the root of the matter, is that the notion of end is incompatible with self-consistency as the paramount principle in ethics. For a self-consistent rational being is a being in harmony with himself, one who if this harmony should in some unaccountable way ever be broken would by his own endeavor seek to return to himself. (Kant declares that the morality of any one man cannot be affected by his fellows, by any influence from the outside; it must be his own act.) But an end presupposes some outside object as a means: means and ends are inseparable correlatives. On the other hand, an entity which merely affirms itself, or if somehow alienated from self endeavors without assistance from beyond its sphere to return to itself, is no true end at all, and cannot be designated as such. It is no end because it employs no means.

What warrant then has Kant for introducing the foreign notion of end into a world of pure self-consistency? When we use the term Necessity in relation to physical phenomena, as of cause and effect, we assert unalterable sequence, unity of temporal and spatial differentiæ. When we use the same term as Kant uses it, we assert the unity of a thing with itself. But this in the nature of the case does not admit the intrusion of the alien concept of the outside. The spiritual society or pattern to which human society ought to be conformed, is according to Kant a society of ends, of ends _per se_. This is his great pronouncement. But the very idea on which he lays so much stress, the idea of end, on closer scrutiny of his premises disappears. The entities composing that society are self-sufficing, and moreover intrinsically unrelated to each other. Rational self-preservation is the only character that can be predicated of any of them.

I have laid stress on the fact that Kant derived his ethical principle from his physics. The passage in which he speaks of the ethical order as a universal and necessary order like that of nature is to my mind conclusive. I now urge in addition that this sort of second nature superimposed upon existing nature would not have to our contemplating minds a dignity superior to that of physical nature. The moral order as thus exhibited would not possess the worth we attribute to it as exalted above what is called the natural order. The falling stone is a perfect illustration of physical necessity. Necessity passed through human consciousness, or bathed in human consciousness, is not on that account a more eligible principle. Nay, since human consciousness interferes and causes contingent actions, due to passion, appetite, etc., the moral order constructed by men should be even less worth while than the physical order of nature, if indeed necessity be the touchstone of worth.[22]

To summarize: according to Kant man as an object is unfit to warrant the claim of unconditional obligation on the part of others toward himself. An abstract principle must be sought. This principle is universality, and necessity based on universality. Respect for this purely abstract notion is that which alone imparts a moral quality to so-called moral acts. We start, according to Kant, with the declaration that man is an end _per se_. But we reject him as an object, and take refuge in a formal principle. We then assume that every human being is conscious of the working within himself of this formal principle and acknowledges his subjection to it, whether he is able to analyze it out or not. And thus indirectly we derive out of emptiness a ray of glory which we allow to fall upon each and every man.

The question now is, since this approach to the ethical problem manifestly fails, must we not begin at the opposite end, and take the attribution of worth to men, however unworthy they may actually be, as our starting-point?

FOOTNOTES:

[21] He also assumes a society not only of rational intelligences determined by the same rational motives, but equal in ability to carry out their motives. (See my article in _Mind_ [new series, Vol. XI, No. 42, p. 162], reprinted in the volume dedicated to William James, by the Philosophical Faculty of Columbia University.)

[22] Surefootedness, or certainty in thinking and in acting seems to have been the chief desideratum at which Kant aimed. As against scepticism or mere empirical groping this element of the inner life is obviously of exceeding value. But it is far from being the only element to be taken into account.