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Now we turn, to the hardest

philosopher that we're going to read in this course

today we turn to Immanuel Kant

who offers a different account

of why we have a categorical duty

to respect the dignity of persons

and not to be use

people

as means

merely

even for good ends.

Kant excelled at the university of Königsberg

at the age of sixteen

at the age of thirty one he got his first job

as an unsalaried lecturer

paid on commission

based on the number of students who showed up at his lectures

this is a sensible system that Harvard would do well to consider

luckily for Kant

he was a popular lecturer and also an industrious one and so he eked out a meager living

it wasn't until

he was fifty seven that he published his first

major work

but it was worth the wait

the book was the critique of pure reason

perhaps the most important work in all of modern philosophy

and a few years later

Kant wrote

the groundwork for the metaphysics of morals which we read in this course

I want to acknowledge even before we start

that Kant is a difficult thinker

but it's important to try to figure out

what he's saying

because what this book is about

is well, it's about what the supreme principle of morality this

number one, and

it's also

it gives us an account

one of the most powerful accounts we have

of what freedom really is

so

let me start today.

Kant rejects utilitarianism

he thinks

that

the individual

person

all human beings

have a certain dignity

that commands our respect

the reason the individual is sacred or the bearer of rights according to Kant,

doesn't stem from the idea that we own ourselves,

but instead from the idea

that we are all rational beings

we're all rational beings which simply means

that we are beings who are capable

of reason.

we're also

autonomous beings

which is to say

that we are beings capable of acting and choosing

freely

now, this capacity for reason and freedom

isn't the only capacity we have.

we also have the capacity for pain and pleasure

for suffering and satisfaction

Kant admits the

utilitarians were half a right

of course

we seek to avoid pain

and we like pleasure

Kant doesn't deny this

what he does deny

is Bentham's claim that

pain in pleasure

are our sovereign masters

he thinks that's wrong.

Kant thinks

that it's are national capacity

that makes us distinctive, that makes us special that sets us

apart from and above mere animal

existence.

it makes us something more than just physical

creatures with appetites. Now

we often think

of freedom

as simply consisting

in doing what we want

or in the absence of obstacles to getting what we want

that's one way of thinking about freedom.

but this isn't Kant's

idea of freedom

Kant has a more stringent

demanding notion

of what it means to be free

and though stringent and demanding, if you think it through

it's actually pretty persuasive

Kant’s reason is as follows

when we,

like animals

seek after pleasure

or the satisfaction of our desires of the avoidance pain

when we do that we aren't really acting freely.

why not?

we're really acting

as the slaves

of those appetites

and impulses

I didn't choose this particular hunger or that particular appetite,

and so when I act to satisfy it

I'm just acting according to natural

necessity

and for Kant,

freedom is the opposite

of necessity

there was an advertising slogan

for the

soft drink Sprite

a few years ago

the slogan was

obey your thirst

there

there's a Kantian insight

buried in that

Sprite advertising slogan

that in a way is Kant's point

when you go for Sprite,

or Pepsi

you're really

you might think that you're choosing freely sprite versus Pepsi

but you're actually

obeying

something, a thirst, or maybe a desire manufactured or massaged by advertising

you're obeying a prompting

that you yourself

haven't chosen

or created

and here

it's worth

noticing

Kant’s specially demanding

idea

of freedom

what way

of acting, how can my will be determined if not by

the prompting sub nature or my hunger or my appetite, or my desires?

Kant's answer:

to act freely

is to act

autonomously

and to act autonomously

is to act according to a law that I give myself

not according

to the physical laws of nature

or to the laws of cause and effect

which include my desire,

to eat or to drink

or to choose this

food in a restaurant over that

now what is the opposite

what is the opposite

of autonomy

for Kant he invest a special term

to describe

the opposite of autonomy

heteronomy

is the opposite of autonomy

when I act

heteronomously

I'm acting

according to an inclination

or a desire

that I haven't chosen for myself

so freedom is autonomy

is this specially stringent

idea

that Kant insists on.

now why is autonomy

the opposite of the acting heteronomously or according to the dictates of nature

Kant’s point is that

nature is governed by laws

laws of cause and effect for example

suppose you drop a billiard ball

it falls to the ground

we wouldn't say the billiard ball is acting freely

why not?

it's acting according to the law of nature

according to the laws

of cause and effect

the law of gravity

and just as he has an unusually

demanding and stringent

conception of freedom,

freedom as autonomy,

he also

has a demanding conception

of morality

to act freely

is not to choose the best means to a given end

it's to choose the end itself for its own sake

and that's something

that human beings can do

and that billiard balls can’t

insofar as we act on

inclination or pursue pleasure

we fact as means

to the realization of ends

given outside us

we are instruments

rather than authors

of the purposes

we pursue

that's

the heteronomous determination of the will

on the other hand

insofar as we act autonomously

according to law we give ourselves

we do something for its own sake

as an end in itself

when we act autonomously

we cease to be instruments to purposes

given outside us

we become

what we can come to think of ourselves

as ends in ourselves.

this capacity to act freely

Kant tells us

is what gives human life its special

dignity.

respecting human dignity

means regarding persons

not just as means

but also as ends in them

and this is why

it's wrong to use people

for the sake of other people's

well being or happiness

this is the real reason Kant says

that utilitarianism goes wrong

this is the reason it's important to respect the dignity of persons

and to uphold their rights.

so even if there are cases

remember John Stuart Mill said well in the long run if we uphold Justice and respect

the dignity of persons

we will maximize human happiness.

What would Kant's answer be to that?

what would his answer be?

even if that were true

even if the calculus worked out that way

even if you shouldn't throw the Christians to the lions because in the long run

fear will spread, the overall utility will decline, the utilitarian

would be upholding Justice and rights and respect for persons

for the wrong reason

for a purely contingent reason

for an instrumental reason

it would still be using people even where the calculus works out

for the best in the long run, it would still using people

as means

rather than

respecting them as ends in themselves.

so that's Kant's idea of freedom as autonomy

and you can begin to see how it's connected

to his idea of morality

but we still have to answer one more question

what gives an act it's moral worth

in the first place

if it can't be directed

at utility or satisfying wants or desires,

what do you think gives an action it's moral worth?

this leads us from Kant’s

demanding idea of freedom

to his demanding idea

of morality.

What does Kant say?

what makes and action

morally worthy

consists not in the consequences or in the results that flow from it

what makes an action morally worthy has to do with

the motive

with the quality of the will

with the intention

for which the act is down

what matters

is the motive

and the motive must be of a certain kind.

so the moral worth of an action depends on the motive for which it's done

and the important thing

is that

the person do the right thing

for the right reason

a goodwill isn't good

because of what it affects or accomplishes, Kant writes,