CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE BY KANT

CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE BY KANT

INTRODUCTION
Like Utilitarianism, Imannual Kant’s moral theory is grounded in a theory of intrinsic value. But where the utilitarian take happiness, conceived of as pleasure and the absence of pain to be what has intrinsic value, Kant takes the only think to have moral worth for its own sake to be the good will. Persons, conceived of as autonomous rational moral agents, are beings that have intrinsic moral worth. This value of persons makes them deserving of moral respect. Kant’s moral theory is often referred to as the "respect for persons" theory of morality.
Kant calls his fundamental moral principle the Categorical Imperative. An imperative is just a command. The notion of a categorical imperative can be understood in contrast to that of a hypothetical imperative. A hypothetical imperative tells you what to do in order to achieve some goal. For instance, "if you want to get a good grade in calculus, work the assignment regularly." This claim tells you what to do in order to get a good grade in calculus. But it doesn’t tell you what to do if you don’t care about getting a good grade. What is distinctive about a categorical imperative is that it tells you how to act regardless of what end or goal you might desire. Kant holds that if there is a fundamental law of morality, it is a categorical imperative. Taking the fundamental principle of morality to be a categorical imperative implies that moral reasons override other sorts of reasons. You might, for instance, think you have a self interested reason to cheat on exam. But if morality is grounded in a categorical imperative, then your moral reason against cheating overrides your self interested reason.
Here are two formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative:
CIa: Always treat persons (including yourself) and ends in themselves, never merely as a means to your own ends.
CIb: Act only on that maxim that you can consistently will to be a universal law.
Kant takes these formulations to be different ways of expressing the same underlying principle of respect for persons. They certainly don’t appear to be synonymous. But we might take them to express the same thing in that each formulation would guide one to act in the same way.
The formulation (CIa), tells us to treat individuals as ends in themselves. That is just to say that persons should be treated as beings that have intrinsic value. To say that persons have intrinsic value is to say that they have value independent of their usefulness for this or that purpose. (CIa) does not tell us that we can never use a person for your own purposes. But it tells us we should never use a person merely as a means to your own ends.
Now let’s consider the second formulation. (CIb) tells us to act only on "maxims" that are universalizable. A maxim here is to be understood as a generalized motivation or intention for acting in a certain way under a certain set of circumstances. A maxim is universalizable if we can will that everyone act accordance with the maxim.
THE FORMULA OF THE UNIVERSAL LAW
This formula articulates the principle from the point of individual action. So each person make sure that his action should be a objective, which is universally willed and self consistent. Each and every decision that you have taken must be applicable to all and be placed in the community context in order to be viable.
An action is said to be morally permissible, first, formulate a maxim that enshrines your reason for acting as you propose. 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.
And a action seems to be immoral when it is subjective and restricted to particular nature and group. In order to explain this he introduced four important duties that is perfect duties toward ourselves, perfect duties toward others, imperfect duties toward ourselves and imperfect duties toward others. Kant example of a perfect duty to others is suppose a person borrows money from other person promise to pay back but he well knows that he will not be able to pay it back. He is sees too that he will get no loan unless he gives a firm promise to pay it back within a fixed time .
Kant would say naturally being rational requires not contradicting oneself, but there is no self-contradiction in the maxim “I will make lying promises when it achieves something I want.” An immoral action clearly does not involve a self-contradiction in this sense. 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. It is world contain my promise and a world in which there can be on promise. 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.
Finally he concludes this formula by saying that I act morally only when I have a disposition to choose. In such a way that I can consistently affirm that everyone ought to do what I do in the same circumstances.
THE FORMULA OF THE END IN ITSELF
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a mean, but always at the same time as an end.”Man in general every rational being, exists as an ends in himself, not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will; he must in all his actions, whether they are directed to himself or to other rational beings, always be viewed at the same time as an end. All the objects of inclination have only a conditioned value. And every rational beings have a universal wish to be wholly free from the inclination.
Thus the value of all objects that can be produced by our action is always conditioned. Beings, whose existence depends, not on our will, but on nature, have none the less, if they are non-rational beings, only a relative value as means and are consequently called things. Rational beings on the other hand, are called persons because their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves, that is, as something which ought not to do used merely as a means, and consequently imposes to that extent a limit on all arbitrary treatment of them.
Persons, therefore, are not merely subjective ends whose existence as an object of our actions has a value for us; they are objective ends that is, things whose existence is in itself an end, and indeed an end such that in its place we can put no other end to which they should serve simply as means.
In other words this formulation tells us to treat individuals as ends in themselves. That is just to say that persons should be treated as beings that have intrinsic value. To say that persons have intrinsic value is to say that they have value independent of their usefulness for this or that purpose. Does not tell us that we can never use a person for your own purposes. But it tells us we should never use a person merely as a means to your own ends.
We treat people as a means to our own ends in ways that are not morally problematic quite often. When I go to the post office, I treat the clerk as a means to my end of sending a letter. But I do not treat that person merely as a means to my own end. I pursue my end of sending a letter through my interaction with the clerk only with the understanding that the clerk is acting autonomously in serving me.
My interaction with the clerk is morally acceptable so long as the clerk is serving me voluntarily, or acting autonomously for his own reasons. By contrast, we use someone merely as a means to our own ends if we force them to do our will, or if we deceive them into doing our will. Coercion and deception are paradigm violations of the categorical imperative. In coercing or deceiving another person, we disrupt their autonomy and violate their will. This is what the categorical imperative forbids. Respecting persons requires refraining from violating their autonomy.
THE FORMULA OF AUTONOMY
This principle of humanity is not borrowed from experience; firstly, because it is universal, applying as it does to all rational beings as such, and no experience is adequate to determine universality; secondly, because in it humanity is conceived, not as a end of man but as an objective end.
And according this principle the decision to act according to a maxim is actually regarded as having made it a universal law. Here the concern with human dignity is combined with the principle of universalizability to produce a conception of the moral law as self-legislated by each for all.
Once we conceive a will of this kind, it becomes clear that while a will which is subject to law may be bound to this law by some interest, nevertheless a will which is itself a supreme law-giver cannot possibly as such depend on any interest; for a will which is dependent in this way would itself require a further law in order to restrict the interest of self-love to the condition that this interest should itself be valid as a universal law. Thus the principle that every human will is a will which by all its maxims enacts universal law.
CONCLUSION
A categorical imperative is something we must always do. In fact, it is our duty to always do it! This means that the categorical imperative is the fundamental, universal and indisputable moral truth of the universe, and as such it is the touchstone for judging whether our actions are good, or not. One might venture to say that even if there were there no humans left in the universe, the categorical imperative would still be true. Kant set out and explored his understanding of the categorical imperative in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), in response to two moral questions:
• What ought I to do?
• What is the highest good (or summum bonum) of humans actions (i.e. their end')?
Kant believed that the highest good for humanity, was to live according to the categorical imperative and that this was to do only those things which everyone else could (and should logically) do.”Act as if the maxim of your action was to become through your will a universal law of nature.”
BIBILIOGRAPHY
Kant, Immanuel. Immanuel Kant; Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals, trans.
A.J. Paton. New York; Harper & Row Publishers, 1964.
JINTO ERINJERY
0924604