Now we turn to the hardest philosopher 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 use people as means merely

even for good ends.

Kant excelled at the University of Konigsberg

at the age of 16.

At age of 31, 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 57 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 “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 what he's saying

because what this book is about

is what the supreme principle of morality is,

number one,

and it also 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 are 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 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 and pleasure are our sovereign masters.

He thinks that's wrong.

Kant thinks that it's our rational 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.

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 it's stringent and demanding,

if you think it through, it's actually pretty persuasive.

Kant reasons as follows:

when we, like animals,

seek after pleasure or the satisfaction of our desires

or the avoidance of 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's a Kantain 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 is worth noticing Kant's specially demanding idea of freedom.

What way of acting – how can my will be determined

if not by the promptings of 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 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

of autonomy for Kant?

He invents 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 as autonomy is an especially stringent idea that Kant insists on.

Now, why is autonomy the opposite of 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 of 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.

In so far as we act on inclination or pursue pleasure,

we act as means to the realization of ends given outside us.

We are instruments rather than authors of the purposes we pursue,

that's the heteronymous determination of the will.

On the other hand, in so far as we act autonomously,

according to a law we give ourselves,

we do something for its own sake as an end in itself.

When we act autonomously, we seize to be instruments

to purposes given outside us,

we become, or 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 themselves.

And this is why it's wrong to use people

for the sake of other peoples' 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 Stewart 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 Christian's to the lions

because in the long run fear will spread,

the overall utility will decline.

The utilitarian would be upholding justice and right

and respect for persons for the wrong reason,

for a purely a 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 be 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 its moral worth in the first place?

If it can't be directed,

that utility or satisfying wants and desires,

what gives an action its moral worth?

This leads us from Kant's demanding idea of freedom

to his demanding idea of morality.

What does Kant say?

What makes an 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 done.

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 good will isn't good because of what it affects or accomplishes,"

Kant writes, "it's good in itself.

Even if by its utmost effort, the goodwill accomplishes nothing,

it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake

as something which has its full value in itself."

And so, for any action to be morally good,

it's not enough that it should conform to the moral law,

it must also be done for the sake of the moral law.

The idea is that the motive confers the moral worth on an action

and the only kind of motive that can confer moral worth on an action

is the motive of duty.

Well, what's the opposite of doing something out of a sense of duty

because it's right?

Well for Kant,

the opposite would be all of those motives

having to do with our inclinations.

And inclinations refer to all of our desires,

all of our contingently given wants,

preferences, impulses, and the like.

Only actions done for the sake of the moral law,

for the sake of duty,

only these actions have moral worth.

Now, I want to see what you think about this idea

but first let's consider a few examples.

Kant begins with an example of a shopkeeper.

He wants to bring out the intuition

and make plausible the idea

that what confers moral worth on an action

is that it be done because it's right.

He says suppose there's a shopkeeper

and an inexperienced customer comes in.

The shopkeeper knows that he could give the customer the wrong change,

could shortchange the customer and get away with it;

at least that customer wouldn't know.

But the shopkeeper nonetheless says,

“Well, if I shortchange this customer, word may get out,

my reputation would be damaged,

and I would loose business,

so I won't shortchange this customer.”

The shopkeeper does nothing wrong,

he gives the correct change,

but does his action have moral worth?

Kant says no, it doesn't have moral worth

because the shopkeeper only did the right thing for the wrong reason,

out of self-interest.

That's a pretty straightforward case.

Then he takes another case, the case of suicide.

He says we have a duty to preserve ourselves.

Now, for most people who love life,

we have multiple reasons for not taking our own lives.

So, the only way we can really tell,

the only way we can isolate the operative motive