7/5/14 6:33 PM Kant confusion | TLS

Page 1 of 4 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1429083.ece
The leading international forum for literary culture
Onora ONeill
ACTING ON PRINCIPLE
An essay on Kantian ethics
279pp. Cambridge University Press.
Paperback, 18.99 (US $28.99).
978 1 107 67553 7
Published: 2 July 2014
Afternoon Quiet Hour by Paul Gauguin Photograph:
The Protected Art Archive/Alamy
Kant confusion
MICHAEL ROSEN
We hope you enjoy this free piece from the TLS; the TLS
is available every Thursday in print and on the TLS app.
In this weeks issue, Charles Glass considers the legacy
of the CIAs secret Arabists, Glyn Maxwell translates
Joseph Brodsky, Helen Cooper welcomes Lavinia
Greenlaws lyric meditation on Chaucer, Bettina
Bildhauer considers the art of ogling (in medieval
German literature) and much more.
In Birds of America Mary McCarthy sends her callow hero, Peter
Levy, to spend a year as a student in Paris. To take with him on his
travels she gives him a copy of Kants Groundwork to the
Metaphysics of Morals. Yet Peter finds it hard to lead his life on
Kantian principles. Too many everyday dilemmas can, it seems, be
argued both ways. Staying in a cheap hotel, for example, he
wonders about the ethics of tipping:
I tried asking myself what Kant would do in my position: Behave
as if thy maxim could be a universal law. If my maxim was not to
tip because the next guy didnt, that would be pretty hard on the
chambermaids of Paris, I decided. So, if he was true to his
philosophy, Kant would tip. Of course he didnt have to face the
issue, never leaving Knigsberg. But you could also argue that
tipping made it tough on the nontipper (which I could produce
some empirical evidence for), and therefore Kant might be against it. If I understand him, he is saying that an action
should be judged by its implications, i.e., if everybody did what you are doing, what would the world be like? Well, a
world in which every student gave a five-franc gratuity to the woman who cleaned his room would be OK, but what
about a world in which every other student did it?
In the end, Peter concludes ruefully, Maybe the categorical imperative is not the best guide for Americans abroad.
Peter is not the first person to have found turning Kants moral philosophy into practice a frustrating business. In the
extended chess tournament of the secondary literature, almost every conceivable analysis of the Groundwork has been
tried out over the past two centuries, yet all have been found wanting in some way or other.
The standard opening is well agreed. Having declared that moral commands must be categorical, Kant tells us that
there is only a single categorical imperative. He formulates it first as follows: act only according to that maxim which
you can at the same time will as universal law, then slightly modifies it to read: act as if the maxim of your action
were to become a universal law of nature by your will. Kant next divides duties along two axes: duties that we owe to
ourselves against those owed to others, and duties that are, as he terms them, perfect (and admit of no exceptions)
7/5/14 6:33 PM Kant confusion | TLS
Page 2 of 4 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1429083.ece
in contrast with those that are imperfect (ones that are no less obligatory yet may be balanced against other claims).
He goes on to present the reader with examples of the four different kinds of duty that result and some reasoning about
why he thinks each is supported by the categorical imperative. His example of a perfect duty to ourselves is the duty
not to commit suicide. A perfect duty to others is the duty not to make a lying promise a promise that one doesnt
intend to keep. We have the imperfect duty to ourselves to develop our powers, while we also have the imperfect duty
to help others if they are in need.
In each case, Kant tells us, the attempt to will the contrary as a universal law would involve a contradiction. Such
contradictions are of two kinds, however. Contradictions in the case of perfect duties involve what he calls a
contradiction in conception we cannot even conceive the contrary as a universal law. Contradictions in will, on the
other hand, involve situations that, while we can conceive them as universal laws, we nevertheless cannot will.
The problems, though, are all too obvious. Take the case of promising. What, Kant asks, if people were to make
promises without intending to keep them? In that case, the practice of promising would surely break down. Yes indeed,
it would be terrible if promising were to vanish from the social world. But that is because the practice of promising is a
valuable one. What if it were, say, the practice of duelling? Or taking a bribe? Wouldnt it be a good thing if they were to
disappear? Using the test of contradiction in conception seems to work only on the assumption that the institution
under threat is worth defending. This classic objection (it goes back to Hegel, at least) has led interpreters from John
Stuart Mill to R. M. Hare to claim that Kant ought really to be seen as a kind of rule-utilitarian someone who thinks
that what matters is following whichever rules will make things go best.
Or consider suicide. If everyone killed themselves there would be no people left alive. But no one, surely, could think
that that was the contrary of the prohibition on suicide. Most people who believe that suicide is allowable affirm the
principle that human beings should be permitted to choose to end their own lives when they no longer see those lives
as valuable (or something like it). It isnt at all clear, however, that there would be any contradiction in conceiving of a
world in which that rule were in place. This brings attention to the action-guiding rules (the maxims, as Kant calls
them) that people are following. Isnt it possible by a bit of judicious maxim-shopping to fit a whole range of moral
principles under the contradiction in conception test? Why not a principle that we should always keep our promises
except when (for instance) the loss to the person promised to is very small but not keeping the promise would let us do
something very good for someone else? Yet, in that case, wouldnt we be back in a utilitarian world?
As for contradictions in will, Kant gives the example of someone who has a talent that, with cultivation, would make
him, as Kant puts it, a useful man in many respects. But he is lazy and not inclined to make the efforts necessary to
develop his powers. That, says Kant, brings him into contradiction with the moral law. 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. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law although men (like the South
Sea islanders) should let their talents rust and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and
propagation of their species in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of
nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. If what we can or cant will is a psychological matter, I
think that the wistful expression I see on the faces of my students when I read them this passage in January or
February is enough to show that willing a world of pleasure-seeking idlers is quite possible.
These problems seem so glaring that it is hard to believe that a philosopher of Kants extraordinary gifts didnt notice
them. Did he think that the replies were too obvious to need stating? One of the many reasons to welcome the second
edition of Onora ONeills Acting on Principle is that it sets out to confront the objections head-on.
As ONeill recalls in the preface to this new edition, Acting on Principle grew out of the doctorate she completed at
Harvard under John Rawls in the 1960s. Rawls was not yet the immense figure he was to become with the publication
of A Theory of Justice in 1971, but then, as later, thinking about and teaching Kant was central to his work. ONeill was
one of the first of many of Rawlss students to become distinguished interpreters of Kants moral philosophy. She is
now Britains most important public philosopher, combining academic work in ethics with major roles in political life
(she is currently a member of the House of Lords and Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission). What
7/5/14 6:33 PM Kant confusion | TLS
Page 3 of 4 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1429083.ece
drew her to Kant?
ONeill explains that she was both attracted and repelled by utilitarianism. On the one hand, she shared with
utilitarianism the view that moral theory should be something precise and determinate that guides actions that one
should look for (as Rawls put it in the title of his very first published article) a decision procedure for ethics. Yet
utilitarianisms own decision procedure is one of ruthless aggregation. Kants moral theory, by contrast, looks to be a
way of defending the individual from instrumental subordination to collective ends. It is, to use the Rawlsian technical
term, deontological. Finally, Rawls and his students took for granted that a Kantian ethical theory must be as
thoroughly secular and compatible with natural science as its utilitarian rival seemed to be. Hence they focused on
Kants formulations of the categorical imperative as a moral law and not his avowedly metaphysical ideas about
how human beings moral agency ties them to a noumenal realm of freedom.
Acting on Principle remains the most incisive and thoughtful defence of Kant along these lines that we have. It is not a
book to read quickly. ONeill does not shirk the enormous complexities of Kants theory. Nor, however, does she
multiply the difficulties unnecessarily. Indeed, she writes with a kind of brisk lucidity that is entirely admirable.
ONeill turns her attention first to the word maxim. Maxim is a Kantian term of art, hard to pin down in detail. The
basic idea is fairly clear, however. For Kant, human beings are rational agents. When they act, their actions can be seen
as the product of a reasoning process in which at least one of the premisses is general. If I get myself a drink of water,
for example, it is the outcome of a piece of reasoning in which something like: when youre thirsty, get a drink figures
as one of the premisses. This makes the question of what principle I am acting on more determinate than it first
appeared. It isnt just a matter of finding some general rule that could be applied to my action to cover it but which
maxim I was actually using to guide me as I acted.
The second step is to look at what Kant means by contradiction. As ONeill points out, it is one thing to ask whether a
world where a maxim is universalized would or would not be an attractive one, another to say that it involves a
contradiction. Reluctant to abandon Kants idea, however, she proposes that we notice the force of Kants formulation
of the categorical imperative as requiring that we will a universal law of nature. Her claim is that a maxim that
involves a contradiction in conception is one in which there is a conflict between the intention of the person acting
and the existence of a world in which the maxim is realized as a law of nature.
False promising can be shown to involve a contradiction in this way, she argues. If everyone promised falsely and false
promising became part of a system of nature, the intention behind false promising deception would be bound to
fail. Public confidence in promises would diminish and finally disappear. The maxim of keeping promises, by contrast,
can be successfully universalized. So it follows that promises should be kept. Similarly, a contradiction in will
requires us to think about the will from a rational point of view. If you engage in an action you ought also to will the
means that are necessary for its successful pursuit. It is this that the neglect of ones talents contradicts.
Still, I am not convinced. If no one accepted bribes, the practice of bribery would atrophy and my intention to enrich
myself by taking a bribe would fail. In a world in which bribes are accepted, on the other hand, it could succeed. So by
parity of reasoning would that not mean that I should take a bribe? As for developing ones talents, it surely depends
what ones ends are. No doubt, the inhabitants of Slacker Island will need to be able to get coconuts from the trees and
spear fish, but that hardly requires the kind of dedicated self-improvement that Kant regards as obligatory.
Yet if even ONeills sophisticated discussion fails to persuade, what are we to think? Derek Parfit, who devotes
hundreds of pages of his recent On What Matters to pursuing the twists and turns of various interpretations of the
categorical imperative, reaches a pessimistic conclusion. It is, he believes, impossible to fit Kants claims together:
Kant simply did not have a single coherent theory. If this is the final verdict on a philosopher who said that being
consistent (consequent) was a philosophers first duty, however, it is a huge setback.
My own belief is that we can indeed see Kants moral philosophy as consistent but that to do so we have to approach it
from a radically different starting point.
7/5/14 6:33 PM Kant confusion | TLS
Page 4 of 4 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1429083.ece
According to Kant, values are of two kinds: dignity and price. Dignity is unconditional and incomparable, in
contrast to price in which trade-offs can be made. Only one thing, however, has dignity: morality, and humanity
insofar as it is capable of morality, or, as Kant also calls it, personhood. Personhood is an aspect of human beings
that transcends the empirical realm and makes us, as it were, citizens of two worlds (so that a person as belonging to
the sensible world is subject to his own personhood insofar as he belongs to the intelligible world). It is from this
inner, intrinsic value of personhood that all other values must descend.
Yes, you might say, but how? If personhood is a transcendental inner kernel that all of us carry within us, then it is, it
seems, something that cant be increased, diminished or destroyed. How is it supposed to guide our actions? The
immediate answer is that personhood is something that we have an absolute duty to respect. Yet that, of course, might
seem to do no more than kick the can down the road in front of us. We know how to respect things that can be violated,
like the right to free speech, but how do we respect an indestructible transcendental kernel?
My answer is that, for Kant, to respect personhood requires us to respect or promote various more empirical features of
human beings: their happiness, their choices and the natural purposes that (so Kant believes) they find within
themselves. We must also act in ways that are expressive of our respect for that value of personhood, so we must not
allow ourselves to behave in a supine or submissive manner and we must not demean or disparage others. Between
them, I think, these different ways of respecting humanity in our persons cover Kants views about the different duties
that we have.
If I am right, the picture of Kant that emerges is a long way from the one that originally attracted ONeill, however. It is
not just that it is metaphysical in the sense that it places its central moral value the only real, intrinsic value
somehow beyond the empirical world. Worse perhaps, from her point of view, it does not offer the kind of sharp
criterion for resolving moral dilemmas that could compete with the utilitarians greatest happiness principle.
Kant, for example, had a view of sex that was prudish even for an elderly Prussian bachelor. For human beings to use
their bodies for sexual pleasure is, he tells us, to make him or herself into a thing, which conflicts with the right of
humanity in his or her own person. But why should we not instead see our loving enjoyment of one anothers bodies
as an affirmation, not a denial, of our humanity?
If the categorical imperative were a universal, algorithmic decision procedure it would resolve that question one way or
the other. If it is rather, as I suspect, a matter of deciding between different conceptions of what counts as showing
respect for humanity in ones person, the matter is much less straightforward: there is no unambiguous, independent
test. In short, the price of a coherent account of Kants moral theory may be giving up one of the principal features that
drew Rawls and his students to him in the first place. Consistent Kant or congenial Kant? Perhaps we cant have both.
Michael Rosen is the author, most recently, of Dignity: Its history and meaning, 2012. He teaches in the
Department of Government at Harvard University.