Kant favored which moral principle

It remains to be seen whether, on this complicated interpretation of Kant, it sufficiently allows for the possibility that one can knowingly and willingly do wrong if the will is practical reason and practical reason is, in part, the moral law. Thus, rather than treating admirable character traits as more basic than the notions of right and wrong conduct, Kant takes virtues to be explicable only in terms of a prior account of moral or dutiful behavior.

He does not try to make out what shape a good character has and then draw conclusions about how we ought to act on that basis. He sets out the principles of moral conduct based on his philosophical account of rational agency, and then on that basis defines virtue as a kind of strength and resolve to act on those principles despite temptations to the contrary.

Moreover, the disposition is to overcome obstacles to moral behavior that Kant thought were ineradicable features of human nature. Thus, virtue appears to be much more like what Aristotle would have thought of as a lesser trait, viz. Third, in viewing virtue as a trait grounded in moral principles, and vice as principled transgression of moral law, Kant thought of himself as thoroughly rejecting what he took to be the Aristotelian view that virtue is a mean between two vices.

The Aristotelian view, he claimed, assumes that virtue typically differs from vice only in terms of degree rather than in terms of the different principles each involves MM , They differ in that the prodigal person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of enjoyment, while the avaricious person acts on the principle of acquiring means with the sole intention of possessing them.

Fourth, in classical views the distinction between moral and non-moral virtues is not particularly significant. A virtue is some sort of excellence of the soul, but one finds classical theorists treating wit and friendliness alongside courage and justice. Since Kant holds moral virtue to be a trait grounded in moral principle, the boundary between non-moral and moral virtues could not be more sharp.

Even so, Kant shows a remarkable interest in non-moral virtues; indeed, much of Anthropology is given over to discussing the nature and sources of a variety of character traits, both moral and non-moral. Fifth, virtue cannot be a trait of divine beings, if there are such, since it is the power to overcome obstacles that would not be present in them.

This is not to say that to be virtuous is to be the victor in a constant and permanent war with ineradicable evil impulses or temptations. Should all of our desires and interests be trained ever so carefully to comport with what morality actually requires of us, this would not change in the least the fact that morality is still duty for us.

For should this come to pass, it would not change the fact that each and every desire and interest could have run contrary to the moral law. And it is the fact that they can conflict with moral law, not the fact that they actually do conflict with it, that makes duty a constraint, and hence is virtue essentially a trait concerned with constraint.

For instance, he holds that the lack of virtue is compatible with possessing a good will G 6: That one acts from duty, even repeatedly and reliably can thus be quite compatible with an absence of the moral strength to overcome contrary interests and desires. Someone with a good will, who is genuinely committed to duty for its own sake, might simply fail to encounter any significant temptation that would reveal the lack of strength to follow through with that commitment. Among the virtues Kant discusses are those of self-respect, honesty, thrift, self-improvement, beneficence, gratitude, sociability, and forgiveness.

Kant also distinguishes vice, which is a steadfast commitment to immorality, from particular vices, which involve refusing to adopt specific moral ends or committing to act against those ends. Although Kant gives several examples in the Groundwork that illustrate this principle, he goes on to describe in later writings, especially in The Metaphysics of Morals , a complicated normative ethical theory for interpreting and applying the CI to human persons in the natural world.

His framework includes various levels, distinctions and application procedures. Kant, in particular, describes two subsidiary principles that are supposed to capture different aspects of the CI.

These principles, in turn, justify more specific duties of right and of ethics and virtue. For example, Kant claims that the duty not to steal the property of another person is narrow and perfect because it precisely defines a kind of act that is forbidden. The duty of beneficence, on the other hand, is characterized as wide and imperfect because it does not specify exactly how much assistance we must provide to others.

Even with a system of moral duties in place, Kant admits that judgment is often required to determine how these duties apply to particular circumstances. It denies, in other words, the central claim of teleological moral views. For instance, act consequentialism is one sort of teleological theory.

It asserts that the right action is that action of all the alternatives available to the agent that has the best overall outcome. Here, the goodness of the outcome determines the rightness of an action. Another sort of teleological theory might focus instead on character traits. In this case, it is the goodness of the character of the person who does or would perform it that determines the rightness of an action.

In both cases, as it were, the source or ground of rightness is goodness. Rightness, on the standard reading of Kant, is not grounded in the value of outcomes or character. There are several reasons why readers have thought that Kant denies the teleological thesis.

First, he makes a plethora of statements about outcomes and character traits that appear to imply an outright rejection of both forms of teleology. This appears to say that moral rightness is not a function of the value of intended or actual outcomes. These certainly appear to be the words of someone who rejects the idea that what makes actions right is primarily their relationship to what good may come of those actions, someone who rejects outright the act consequentialist form of teleology.

Moreover, Kant begins the Groundwork by noting that character traits such as the traditional virtues of courage, resolution, moderation, self-control, or a sympathetic cast of mind possess no unconditional moral worth, G —94, — If the moral rightness of an action is grounded in the value of the character traits of the person who performs or would perform it then it seems Kant thinks that it would be grounded in something of only conditional value.

This certainly would not comport well with the virtue ethics form of teleology. Perhaps the first philosopher to suggest a teleological reading of Kant was John Stuart Mill. In the first chapter of his Utilitarianism , Mill implies that the Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative could only sensibly be interpreted as a test of the consequences of universal adoption of a maxim.

And because they are universal, Hare argued, they forbid making exceptions. Indeed, Cummiskey argues that they must be: Respect for the value of humanity entails treating the interests of each as counting for one and one only, and hence for always acting to produce the best overall outcome.

That, she argues, would imply that there would be no reason to conform to them. Instead, Kant thought the principles of rationality taken together constitute rational agency, and rational agency so constituted itself functions as a value that justifies moral action , Guyer argues that autonomy itself is the value grounding moral requirements. And Wood argues that humanity itself is the grounding value for Kant. While the second Critique claims that good things owe their value to being the objects of the choices of rational agents, they could not, in his view, acquire any value at all if the source of that value, rational agency, itself had no value , ; see also —8.

If their value thereby becomes the source of the rightness of our actions — say, our actions are right if and because they treat that self-standing value in various ways — then her reading too is teleological. On the latter view, moral demands gain their authority simply because a rational will, insofar as you are rational, must will them.

On the former view, by contrast, a rationale is at hand: because your will is, insofar as it is rational, good. Proponents of this former reading are, however, then left with the burden of explaining how it could be the autonomy of the will alone that explains the authority of morality. One might have thought that this question is quite easy to settle.

At the basis of morality, Kant argued, is the Categorical Imperative, and imperatives are not truth apt. But, in fact, the question is not at all easy.

Thus while at the foundation of morality there would be an imperative which is not truth apt, particular moral judgments themselves would describe what that imperative rules out and so would themselves be truth apt. Philosophers such as R. Objectivity, according to Hare, is to be understood as universality, and the Categorical Imperative prescribes universally. A second issue that has received considerable attention is whether Kant is a metaethical constructivist or realist.

Constructivism in metaethics is the view that moral truths are, or are determined by, the outcomes of actual or hypothetical procedures of deliberation or choice. Autonomy, in this sense, means that such agents are both authors and subjects of the moral law and, as such, are not bound by any external requirements that may exist outside of our wills.

Instead, we are only subject to moral requirements that we impose on ourselves through the operation of our own reason independently of our natural desires and inclinations. The common error of previous ethical theories, including sentimentalism, egoism and rationalism, is that they failed to recognize that morality presupposes that we have autonomy of the will. On these interpretations, Kant is a skeptic about arbitrary authorities, such as God, natural feelings, intrinsic values or primitive reasons that exist independently of us.

Only reason itself has genuine authority over us, so we must exercise our shared powers of reasoned deliberation, thought and judgment, guided by the Categorical Imperative as the most basic internal norm of reason, to construct more specific moral requirements. Kantians in this camp, however, disagree about how this rational procedure should be characterized.

Other commentators interpret Kant as a robust moral realist Ameriks ; Wood ; Langton ; Kain The moral law then specifies how we should regard and treat agents who have this special status. Autonomy of the will, on this view, is a way of considering moral principles that are grounded in the objective value of rational nature and whose authority is thus independent of the exercise of our wills or rational capacities. Some interpreters of Kant, most notably Korsgaard , seem to affirm a kind of quietism about metaethics by rejecting many of the assumptions that contemporary metaethical debates rest on.

For example, some of these philosophers seem not to want to assert that moral facts and properties just are the outcomes of deliberative procedures. Rather, they seem more eager to reject talk of facts and properties as unnecessary, once a wholly acceptable and defensible procedure is in place for deliberation. Once we are more sensitive to the ethical concerns that really matter to us as rational agents, we will find that many of the questions that animate metaethicists turn out to be non-questions or of only minor importance.

Most translations include volume and page numbers to this standard Academy edition. Citations in this article do so as well. The following volumes of that series are especially relevant to his moral theory:.

There have been several comprehensive commentaries on the Groundwork that have been published recently, some of which also include new English translations. Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy 2. Good Will, Moral Worth and Duty 3. Duty and Respect for Moral Law 4. Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives 5. The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature 6. The Humanity Formula 7.

The Autonomy Formula 8. The Kingdom of Ends Formula 9. The Unity of the Formulas Autonomy Virtue and Vice Normative Ethical Theory Teleology or Deontology? Duty and Respect for Moral Law According to Kant, what is singular about motivation by duty is that it consists of bare respect for the moral law. Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative.

The following volumes of that series are especially relevant to his moral theory: Practical Philosophy , translated by Mary Gregor, Schneewind, Booth tr.

Engstrom and J. Whiting eds. Hill, Thomas E. Bagnoli ed. An illustration of why one might think that this is true might be the following. If my paying the relevant amount of money to buy a car from a dealership is a sufficient condition for my obtaining the car, then it cannot also be the case that making a good impression on the salesperson is a necessary condition for me to obtain the car. If I pay for it, I'll get the car regardless of whether I make a good impression. Likewise, it is not prima facie implausible to think that if neurophysiological states are a sufficient condition for me to believe p, then it cannot also be the case that the presence of good reasons for believing p is also a necessary condition for my believing p.

And, if you add the principle used above that if a belief is not caused by the recognition of reasons for believing, then the belief is not justified, then one gets the conclusion that if neurophysiological states are sufficient condition for believing, then no beliefs are justified. Nonetheless, upon further reflection, I think this principle can be decisively seen to be false. Consider the following example. The logic here is simple.

If p implies q, and p is a sufficient condition for r, then even if p and q are distinct properties, q is also a necessary condition for r. Goldman makes the same point when he introduces the notion of simultaneous nomic equivalents, which he characterizes as follows: If there is a law such that. How does all of this relate to the issue of whether one can think of a belief as both based on good reasons and the product of deterministic processes? Let us also grant with Leibniz and Kant that reasons act as a cause of beliefs or actions in a different way than, on the deterministic picture, brain states or whatever do.

And if they are simultaneous nomic equivalents, it is open to the determinist to say that although mental states are the result of sufficient material conditions, the recognition of good reasons is at least sometimes causally necessary to produce a belief.

So, suppose determinism is true, and for every belief there is some set of material conditions c that is responsible for my holding that belief. Now, Hasker has tried to answer Goldman's objection by appealing to the fact that, in order for one to be rationally justified in holding some belief, that belief must not only be held on the basis of reasons, it must be held on the basis of good reasons.

He writes:. On Goldman's view, my accepting such and such as a reason, which may in fact happen to be a good one, is a necessary condition of my reaching a particular conclusion. But the reason's being a good one is not a necessary condition. I see no reason, however, why Goldman's account could not accommodate the thought that sometimes people believe things because they recognize good reasons for doing so.

There's nothing to prevent Goldman from saying that reasons cause belief and sometimes good epistemic agents are sensitive to whether the reason in question is a good one.

A good epistemic agent qua good epistemic agent will only believe on the basis of good reasons, and, therefore, in cases where someone is behaving as a good epistemic agent, the goodness of the reasons for belief are relevant. So, I think that if this analysis of Kant's argument is right, the argument is a bad one. I want now to briefly explore how the argument might be changed so as to avoid the difficulty raised by the possibility of simultaneous nomic equivalents.

One way to do this is to modify the view that Kant's argument is meant to rule out. In the foregoing, I have taken it for granted that the view that Kant is directed against is fatalism or determinism.

Before I discuss that principle, though, I should note that there's an exegetical issue here as to whether the assumption that Kant is directing his argument simply against determinism is true. I have not defended this assumption because I think it is the most natural way to read the texts with which I have been dealing, and trying to settle the exegetical issue would be beyond the scope of the essay. But I do not think that it is obvious that there is not a more complex dialectic going on here.

So, depending on what the claim that one takes Kant to be arguing against is, Kant might have been arguing against something like the position I am about to sketch. The principle that I have in mind is what Kim calls the "Principle of Explanatory Exclusion" and formulates as follows: "No event can be given more than one complete and independent explanation" A material explanation would be complete, if it were not necessary to refer to any other material event or fact in order to explain the event.

Likewise, a rationalizing explanation would be complete if there was no consideration or weighing of a consideration that is necessary to explain why she formed the belief. These two kinds of explanations could be independent in that it is not necessary to refer to rationalizing facts in order to explain the material facts and vice versa.

Suppose, then, that one endorses the Principle of Explanatory Exclusion and thinks that mental events are explicable by reference to material conditions. Either that person must identify responding to reasons as part of the material explanation of the belief, or they must say that reasons do not figure in the complete explanation of the belief.

We have already seen a Kantian argument against thinking that responding to reasons can be part of the material explanation. The thought there was that all material causes necessitate their effects, but reasons never function this way, so responding to reasons cannot be part of the material cause.

Therefore, the proponent of the Principle of Explanatory Exclusion who believes determinism is true is left with the conclusion that reasons do not figure into the complete explanation of why someone holds a belief. Now if we add the principle that in order for a belief to be justified it must be caused in some way by the recognition of reasons for believing, we have an argument for the claim that if determinism and the Principle of Explanatory Exclusion are true, then no beliefs are rationally justified.

We can formulate the argument as follows:. Reasons cannot explain beliefs in the same way that material conditions do. Therefore, reference to reasons are not necessary in a complete material explanation of a belief. Therefore, if determinism is true and the Principle of Explanatory Exclusion is true, reasons do not explain beliefs. If s believes p on the basis of reasons, then reasons for believing p explain the belief in some way.

Therefore, if determinism and the Principle of Explanatory Exclusion are true, no one believes on the basis of reasons. I have argued for a particular interpretation of Kant's argument that regarding oneself as rational implies regarding oneself as free.

This argument is, I think, a bad one because it neglects the possibility of what Goodman calls simultaneous nomic equivalents. One way to reformulate Kant's argument so as to avoid this difficulty is by taking him not to be arguing against determinism simpliciter, but against the view that determinism is true and that mental events can only be explained as material phenomena.

Taking the argument that way yields an interesting and not implausible argument. Goldman, A. Hasker, W. Jordan, J. Kant, I. Gesammelte Schriften. Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, ab Bd.

Berlin: de Gruyer, Mary J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Kim, J. Leibniz, G. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Locke, J. Peter H. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Ideas y Valores , vol. LXVII , no. Keywords: I. Kant, free will, Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, theoretical rationality. Palabras clave: I.

Philosophers most often deal with the question of free will in connection with moral issues. For example, the question of whether determinism and free will are compatible is usually of interest to people who are concerned about the implications of determinism for moral responsibility: free will is a prerequisite for moral responsibility, the thought goes, so if determinism rules out free will and determinism is a fact, then none of us are morally responsible for our actions.

It is unsurprising, then, that Kant's main interest in free will also has to do with questions pertaining to morality. What is surprising, though, is that Kant not only thinks that freedom of some kind must be presupposed in order to regard ourselves as morally responsible, but also that freedom must be presupposed in order to regard ourselves as theoretically rational i.

But why exactly Kant thinks this is not entirely easy to determine. Here I will focus on the argument as it occurs in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, though, of course, in attempting to explain that argument, I will make reference to what he says about the issue elsewhere as well. Kant's goal in the third section of the Groundwork is to show that the categorical imperative applies to all rational agents. In order to do so, Kant needs to show that all rational agents must be regarded as free in some way, because in order for the categorical imperative to apply to an agent, that agent must be capable of acting or failing to act accordingly.

He starts with a negative characterization: freedom is a property of the will "that it [the will] can be efficient independently of alien causes determining it" GMS ; cf. On the contrary, since the will is a cause, and Kant thinks that all causes must act in accordance with laws, even the free will must act in accordance with some laws.

So, in order for a will to be free, it must operate according to laws that it imposes on itself. This leads to Kant's positive characterization of freedom as "the will's property of being a law to itself" G IV; cf. Kpv V33 and MS V Equivalently, a free will is an autonomous will. Now, in GMS II, Kant had argued that for a will to act autonomously is for it to act in accordance with the categorical imperative, the moral law.

Thus, Kant famously remarks: "a free will and a will under moral laws is one and the same" ibd. The question of whether freedom of the will can be presupposed is taken up in the next part of section three, which is titled "Freedom Must be Presupposed as a Property of the Will of All Rational Beings. By referring to the kind of freedom that he wants to show that all rational agents have as "freedom in a practical respect", Kant is distinguishing his project from that of showing that every rational agent is in fact free, which Kant refers to as "freedom in a theoretical respect" cf.

Kant's footnote to IV To show that all rational agents have freedom in a theoretical respect would be to show that all rational agents are free. To show that all rational agents are free in a practical respect, by contrast, would be merely to show that all rational agents must regard themselves as free. The reason why it is sufficient for Kant's purposes to prove only that all rational beings are free in a practical respect is that being free in a practical respect means being committed to viewing the moral law as applying to oneself.

For, as we said before, to be free is just to act in accordance with the moral law. Thus, the crucial part of the argument is the next step, in which Kant argues that all rational beings are free in a practical respect. It is in this portion of the argument that the key passage that I want to deal with occurs. Kant begins by asserting that for "[every rational being] we think of a reason that is practical, that is, has causality with respect to its objects" GIV The idea that the will is a "causality with respect to objects" is meant to suggest that to have practical reason is to have a will that is capable of generating reasons for action from itself.

What Kant wants to say is that in order to view oneself as having a practical will, one must regard one's will itself as generating motivation for acting. If one only views oneself as acting on the basis of impulses, then one cannot also view oneself as having a practical will.

Now, the passage that I want to focus on throughout the rest of this essay occurs immediately after the sentence just quoted. I quote it in full, labeling the two sentences for clarity in my later discussion:. Now, Sentence 2 states the conclusion of the argument, and specifically, the part of the conclusion that is of most interest for our purposes, is 2a, so let us begin our analysis of this passage by considering that.

What does Kant mean when he says, "Reason must regard itself as the author of its principles independently of alien influences? Regarding 1 , the context of the argument is, of course, a discussion specifically of practical reason. So one might think that Kant is making a point here only about the practical domain. But I believe it is fair to think that Kant is talking about both practical and theoretical reason based on three considerations. First, Kant states the argument in terms of reason as such, so, taken at face value, it seems obvious that we ought to take him as speaking not only about practical reason, but about theoretical reason as well.

Second, when one considers the argument, it seems clear that if it is sound, it will apply just as much to theoretical reason as to practical reason.

So, even if Kant had framed the argument specifically in terms of practical reason, it would still be reasonable to extend the argument to apply to the theoretical case as well. So much, then, for what the intended referent of "reason" here is. Now, regarding 2 there seems to be two questions that need to be answered: a what, in general, is meant when Kant says that x must regard itself as y?

And b , what does it mean for reason to have to regard itself as whatever? I shall have relatively little to say in response to a other than to point out the difference between the claim that reason must hold that it is free and the claim that reason must regard itself as free.

The difference between the two might elude the casual reader, insofar as locutions like the following seem to mean roughly the same thing: "I regard her as the best athlete on campus" and "I think that she is the best athlete on campus. This is seen from the fact that Kant is very careful to make clear that he does not intend to give a theoretical proof, but rather a practical proof of freedom of the will.

The difference between these two kinds of proof is precisely the difference between showing that some claim is true and showing that we must act or think as if some claim is true, where this leaves open the theoretical question of whether the claim is true or not. What it is to regard x as y, in Kant's sense, then, seems intuitive enough. But why does Kant say that reason must regard itself as free instead of that we must regard ourselves as free?

One way to gloss this claim might be to say that insofar as we are rational, we must regard ourselves as free. But I think this is unsatisfactory since it seems to imply that we are rationally obligated to think that we are free. But if Kant has shown that we are rationally obligated to believe that we are free, then he seems to have given a theoretical proof of the proposition rather than a practical proof.

A better way to gloss Kant's conclusion, then, would be to say that insofar as we take ourselves to be rational, we must take ourselves to be free. This gloss would explain why Kant frames his conclusion in the immediately surrounding context as that freedom is a property of all rational beings.

The thought is that to be rational is to be free in a certain sort of way so if one regards oneself as rational, one must regard oneself as free. Having said this much, we are able to provide a rough sketch of what the argument in this passage is supposed to be.

What it is for a will to be free is for it to act autonomously the positive definition of freedom , or equivalently, for it to act independently of alien influences the negative definition of freedom.

To take oneself to be rational is to take oneself as able to act or believe independently of alien influences. Therefore, to take oneself to be rational is to take oneself to act or believe independently of alien influences. The main interpretative question that remains for us is, then, to explain why does Kant endorse 2. And to answer this, we must answer the question of what Kant means when he refers to reason being independent of alien influences. Thus, Kant is providing here a kind of argument against determinism: we cannot rationally believe that determinism extends so far as to include even our beliefs and rational assessments, because if we do, then we abolish the possibility of regarding any of our beliefs as rational.

To see why Kant thinks this, let us turn to Sentence 1. The thought in Sentence 1 is, I think, best illustrated by an example. If I form the belief that quiche is an unhealthy food and realize upon reflection that the only reason for my belief is a dislike for its taste, then I cannot regard the belief that quiche is unhealthy as rational.

In this case it was not my rational faculty, or as Kant simply puts it, "reason" that was active in forming the belief at all. Since Kant presents moral and prudential rational requirements as first and foremost demands on our wills rather than on external acts, moral and prudential evaluation is first and foremost an evaluation of the will our actions express, applying to the actions themselves only derivatively.

Thus, it is not an error of rationality to fail to take the necessary means to one's willed ends, nor to fail to want to take the means; one only falls foul of practical reason if one fails to will the means. Likewise, while actions, feelings or desires may be the focus of other moral views, for Kant practical irrationality, both moral and prudential, focuses on our willing. Hence, morality and other rational requirements are demands that apply to the maxims that motivate our actions.

Since this is a principle stating only what some agent wills, it is subjective. A principle for any rational will would be an objective principle of volition, which Kant refers to as a practical law.

For anything to count as human willing, it must be based on a maxim to pursue some end through some means. Hence, in employing a maxim, any human willing already embodies the form of means-end reasoning that calls for evaluation in terms of hypothetical imperatives. To that extent at least, then, anything dignified as human willing must be rational.

Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances.

Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this law of nature. If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is morally permissible. If your maxim passes all four steps, only then is acting on it morally permissible. So, for instance, Kant held that the maxim of committing suicide to avoid future unhappiness did not pass the third step, the contradiction in conception test.

Hence, one is forbidden to act on the maxim of committing suicide to avoid unhappiness. By contrast, the maxim of refusing to assist others in pursuit of their projects passes the contradiction in conception test, but fails the contradiction in the will test.

Hence, we have a duty to sometimes and to some extent aid and assist others. Kant held that ordinary moral thought recognized moral duties toward ourselves as well as toward others. Hence, together with the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, we recognize four categories of duties: perfect duties toward ourselves, perfect duties toward others, imperfect duties toward ourselves and imperfect duties toward others.

Kant uses four examples, one of each kind of duty, to demonstrate that every kind of duty can be derived from the CI, and hence to bolster his case that the CI is indeed the fundamental principle of morality. To refrain from suicide is a perfect duty toward oneself; to refrain from making promises you have no intention of keeping is a perfect duty toward others; to develop one's talents is an imperfect duty toward oneself; and to contribute to the happiness of others an imperfect duty toward others.

Again, Kant's interpreters differ over exactly how to reconstruct the derivation of these duties. I will briefly sketch one way of doing so for the perfect duty to others to refrain from lying promises and the imperfect duty to ourselves to develop talents. Kant's example of a perfect duty to others concerns a promise you might consider making but have no intention of keeping in order to get needed money. An immoral action clearly does not involve a self-contradiction in this sense as would the maxim of finding a married bachelor.

Kant's position is that it is irrational to perform an action if that action's maxim contradicts itself once made into a universal law of nature. The maxim of lying whenever it gets what you want generates a contradiction once you try to combine it with the universalized version that all rational agents must, by a law of nature, lie when it gets what they want.

Here is one way of seeing how this might work: If I conceive of a world in which everyone by nature must try to deceive people any time it will get what they want, I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving one's word could ever arise. So I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving one's word exists. My maxim, however, is to make a deceptive promise in order to get needed money.

And it is a necessary means of doing this that a practice of taking the word of others exists, so that someone might take my word and I take advantage of their doing so. Thus, in trying to conceive of my maxim in a world in which no one ever takes anyone's word in such circumstances, I am trying to conceive of this: a world in which no practice of giving one's word exists, but also, at the very same time, a world in which just such a practice does exist, for me to make use of in my maxim.

It is a world containing my promise and a world in which there can be no promises. Hence, it is inconceivable that my maxim exists together with itself as a universal law. Since it is inconceivable that these two things should exist together, I am forbidden ever to act on the maxim of lying to get money. By contrast with the maxim of the lying promise, we can easily conceive of adopting a maxim of refusing to develop any of our talents in a world in which that maxim is a universal law of nature.

It would undoubtedly be a world more primitive than our own, but pursuing such a policy is still conceivable in it. However, it is not, Kant argues, possible to rationally will this maxim in such a world. The argument for why this is so, however, is not obvious, and some of Kant's thinking seems hardly convincing: Insofar as we are rational, he says, we already necessarily will that all of our talents and abilities be developed.

Hence, although I can conceive of a talentless world, I cannot rationally will that it come about, given I already will, insofar as I am rational, that I develop all of my own. Yet, given limitations on our time, energy and interest, it is difficult to see how full rationality requires us to aim to fully develop literally all of our talents. Indeed, it seems to require much less, a judicious picking and choosing among one's abilities.

Further, all that is required to show that I cannot will a talentless world is that, insofar as I am rational, I necessarily will that some talent in me be developed, not the dubious claim that I rationally will that they all be developed. Moreover, suppose rationality did require me to aim at developing all of my talents.

Then, there seems to be no need to go further in the CI procedure to show that refusing to develop talents is immoral. Given that, insofar as we are rational, we must will to develop capacities, it is by this very fact irrational not to do so. However, mere failure to conform to something we rationally will is not yet immorality.

Failure to conform to instrumental principles, for instance, is irrational but not immoral. In order to show that this maxim is categorically forbidden, I believe we must make use of several other of Kant's claims or assumptions. Each maxim appears to have happiness as its aim. One explanation for this is that, since each person necessarily wills happiness, maxims in pursuit of this goal will be the typical object of moral evaluation.

Second, we must assume, as also seems reasonable, that a necessary means to achieving normal human happiness is not only that we ourselves develop some talent, but also that others develop some capacities of theirs at some time. For instance, I cannot engage in the normal pursuits that make up my own happiness, such as playing piano, writing philosophy or eating delicious meals, unless I have developed some talents myself, and, moreover, someone else has made pianos and written music, taught me writing, harvested foods and developed traditions of their preparation.

Finally, Kant's examples come on the heels of defending the position that rationality requires conformity to hypothetical imperatives. Thus, we should assume that, necessarily, rational agents will the necessary and available means to any ends that they will.

And once we add this to the assumptions that we must will our own happiness as an end, and that developed talents are necessary means to achieving that end, it follows that we cannot rationally will that a world come about in which it is a law that no one ever develops any capacities. We cannot do so, because our own happiness is the very end contained in the maxim of giving oneself over to pleasure rather than self-development.

Since we will the necessary and available means to our ends, we are rationally committed to willing that someone sometime develop talents. So since we cannot will as a universal law of nature that no one ever develop any talents — given it is inconsistent with what we now see that we rationally will — we are forbidden from adopting the maxim of refusing to develop any of our own. Most philosophers who find Kant's views attractive find them so because of the Humanity formulation of the CI.

This formulation states that we should never act in such a way that we treat Humanity, whether in ourselves or in others, as a means only but always as an end in itself. Intuitively, there seems something wrong with treating human beings as mere instruments with no value beyond this. But this very intuitiveness can also invite misunderstandings. First, the Humanity formula does not rule out using people as means to our ends.

Clearly this would be an absurd demand, since we do this all the time. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any life that is recognizably human without the use of others in pursuit of our goals. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the chairs we sit on and the computers we type at are gotten only by way of talents and abilities that have been developed through the wills of many people.

What the Humanity formula rules out is engaging in this pervasive use of Humanity in such a way that we treat it as a mere means to our ends. Thus, the difference between a horse and a taxi driver is not that we may use one but not the other as a means of transportation.

Unlike a horse, the taxi driver's Humanity must at the same time be treated as an end in itself. Thus, supposing that the taxi driver has freely exercised his rational capacities in pursuing his line of work, we make permissible use of these capacities as a means when we behave in a way that he could, when exercising his rational capacities, consent to — for instance, by paying an agreed on price.

Third, the idea of an end has three senses for Kant, two positive senses and a negative sense. An end in the first positive sense is a thing we will to produce or bring about in the world. For instance, if losing weight is my end, then losing weight is something I aim to produce. An end in this sense guides my actions in that once I will to produce something, I then deliberate about means of producing it.

Once I have adopted an end in this sense, it dictates that I do something: I will act in ways that will bring about that end. An end in the negative sense lays down a law for me as well, and so guides action, but in a different way.

Korsgaard offers self-preservation as an example of an end in a negative sense: We do not try to produce our self-preservation. Rather, the end of self-preservation prevents us from engaging in certain kinds of activities, for instance, picking fights with mobsters, and so on.

That is, as an end, it is something I do not act against in pursuing my positive ends, rather than something I produce. Humanity is in the first instance an end in this negative sense: It is something that limits what I may do in pursuit of my other ends, similar to the way that my end of self-preservation limits what I may do in pursuit of other ends. Insofar as it limits my actions, it is a source of perfect duties. Now self-preservation is a subjective end, while Humanity is an objective end.

Self-preservation is subjective in that it is not an end that every rational being must have. We do place more importance on it than most of our other positive ends. Because self-preservation is more important to me than excitement, I am not a base-jumper, and so self-preservation puts a limit on my behavior.

But I could make self-preservation less important if I wish, and perhaps put excitement in its place so that it, and not self-preservation, limits pursuit of my other ends. Humanity is an objective end, because it is an end that every rational being must have insofar as she is rational. Hence, it limits what I am morally permitted to do when I pursue my positive and subjective negative ends. The Humanity in myself and others is also a positive end, though not in the first positive sense above, as something to be produced by my actions.

Rather, it is something to realize, cultivate or further by my actions. Becoming a philosopher, pianist or novelist might be my end in this sense.

When my end is becoming a pianist, my actions do not, or at least not simply, produce something, being a pianist, but constitute or realize the activity of being a pianist. Insofar as the Humanity in ourselves must be treated as an end in itself in this second positive sense, it must be cultivated, developed or fully actualized.