Kantian Ethics and the Categorical Imperative

The Foundations of Kantian Morality

Moral: Kant based morality—the requirement to do good, or better, the best possible good—on what he calls the 'categorical imperative.' Being a formal morality, which does not affect the contents but rather the foundations from which the moral imperative arises, it has a formulation that is often perceived as too cold and devoid of feeling. If we are told, "Act so that the rules governing your behavior become a universal rule for all humanity," this does not always awaken an immediate sense of duty; instead, all efforts are directed at understanding what the statement means. However, moral actions are truly significant if they are tinged with feeling. If I treat another person as an end and not as a means, it is often solidarity and love that help me to treat them as an end, rather than the abstract Kantian statement alone.

Will and the Categorical Imperative

We see, in particular, the relationship with the text from the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant seeks a way to support autonomy and practical behavior using a synthetic a priori view of a practical nature: the categorical imperative.

The only way that the will can be autonomous or free (a property of formal ethics), independent of any external body (heteronomous ethics), is for it to become a law unto itself. This implies the need for the laws of the will—which are subjective maxims—to become objective laws of a universal nature (another feature of formal ethics). That is precisely what the categorical imperative entails, one of whose wordings is: "Act in such a way that the maxim of your action could become a universal law of behavior."

Categorical vs. Hypothetical Imperatives

This contrasts with the hypothetical imperative, another moral mandate which states what to do if you want to achieve a specific end; i.e., it is an imperative that is mediated, conditioned, and characteristic of material ethics. In contrast, within the categorical imperative of Kant's formal ethics, action is not determined by any external order but is an end in itself and a good in itself (such as being honest), without seeking a reward in exchange or escaping punishment. Because it does not point to any concrete empirical content, unlike the hypothetical mandate, it can be considered a rule of universal validity for all rational beings.