Kantian Ethics: Moral Ideals and Duty

Kantian Ethics

Moral Ideals

Moral ideals address the question: What should I do? Morality offers guidance to achieve the ideal of happiness. However, defining happiness and identifying what truly brings us happiness remains a challenge.

Material Ethics

All material ethics share the acceptance of a supreme good that guides human behavior and moral norms.

Material ethics are heteronomous, meaning they are derived from external sources outside of rationality. They are based on the feeling of satisfaction derived from external objects beyond our control (the will is not autonomous).

Therefore, the mandates of material ethics are hypothetical: not valid in themselves, but dependent on achieving the desired goal.

Material ethics cannot formulate universal ethical mandates or imperatives. Only formal ethics can be universal.

Formal Ethics

Morality

Kant believes that the moral ideal is not simply happiness. If happiness depends on feelings of pleasure or displeasure towards a desired object, it becomes empirical and cannot be an objective, universal, or necessary law.

Duty

Kant distinguishes between acts according to their motivation:

• Acts contrary to duty: Driven by inclination. For example, if you approach a motionless bicyclist and, upon realizing they are your sporting rival, decide not to help. This action is morally wrong, contrary to duty.
• Acts in accordance with duty: Can be motivated by inclination (acting according to the rule out of self-interest) or by duty (pure respect for moral law). Only if we help another human being simply because it is our duty is the act morally good.

An act is morally good when it is done out of duty.

Humans, influenced by biases, may believe they are doing the right thing when they are not. Therefore, rational guidance is needed: the categorical imperative.

Categorical Imperative

Imperatives are principles guiding behavior. These can be subjective (maxims), valid only for the individual's will, or objective (laws), valid for every rational being.

Hypothetical imperatives belong to material ethics; their validity depends on empirical conditions.

Categorical imperatives are principles or practical laws mandating conduct regardless of the action's subject matter or its effects.