On “Kant, The Categorical Imperative” (443 words)

You are an individual who has been dealt a bad hand in life. Impoverished from birth, you never knew what it was like to eat three meals a day. This persists into your adulthood, and on one particularly famished day, you are presented with a choice. The farmer’s market is today, and someone not far from where you are is selling apples. The apples are in abundance, hundreds, and even better for you, the owners are away from their stand. Do you take one?

Mill says yes. You’re hungry, and you stand to benefit from it more than the shopkeeps do. After all, there’s hundreds of apples. How much do they really stand to lost from one less? Not much. Right?

Kant disagrees. Kant operates on what he calls the “Categorical Imperative” which prompts individuals to “Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.” What this means is to, as a rule of thumb, assume with each decision you make, that it would be appropriate for others to make decisions in the same way.

For example, refer back to the example found at the beginning of the blog. Before stealing the apple, Kant wants the individual to take into consideration how the world would be should stealing be normalized. Safe to say, things might be much worse if no one’s property was safe from anyone else who had the means and the opportunity to steal it. On the other hand, if you consider how the world would be should theft be universally frowned upon, things seem much better. Everyone could know at all times that their belongings are safe.

What Kant encourages individuals not to do is act under the motivation of sympathy. Kantian philosophy says that a “good” action is determined by its intention rather than by its consequences, and for an action to have “good” intention, it has to be rooted in the rationally good will of the individual. So, in order to do something of true moral worth, it has to be motivated by truly good will rather than by sympathy. Sympathy also has the side effect of not allowing an individual to approach a situation with unbiased logic, rather with an inclination in one direction or the other.

Sympathy gives people an end goal rather than acting as an end goal in itself. This is the difference between a categorical imperative and a hypothetical imperative. The Categorical Imperative provides instructions on what to do in any and all situations, whereas hypothetical imperatives, like those explored in utilitarian philosophy, refer to actions taken in search of a particular goal.