Kantian deontology – part 2

(Note to students:  The following lecture notes contain the really hard stuff in this reading.  It is so hard, that no first year student could reasonably be expected to be conversant in it.  I may or may not deliver much of this lecture, depending on how class goes.  Do not in your studying feel obliged to learn this stuff.  I’ll highlight the stuff below that you’d be expected to know for an exam, but otherwise, don’t worry too much about this material.)

•	why does reason play such a huge role in Kant’s ethics?  Recall the hallmarks of pure judgment in Kant’s epistemology:  necessity and universality.  Reason alone has access to the necessary and the universal, for Kant.  Now, he worries that if ethical precepts are merely general, then we will constantly make excuses for ourselves, and refuse to be constrained by those precepts.  However, if ethical precepts are universal, then we may break them, but we may never excuse ourselves from them.  There will never be a sense in which an ethical precept “doesn’t apply to me.”  He regards this as essential for ethics.  That is, it is the a priori source of ethical imperatives that lend them their commanding authority.
•	so, we should in fact guard against empirical elements in ethics, says Kant.  This includes the large empirical element in consequentialist theories.  (That is, consequentialist ethical systems don’t face epistemological problems in practice, but also in principle!)
•	since Kant sees reason as necessarily bound up in ethics, he gives rational agents a special role in ethics.
•	what distinguishes rational agents, says Kant, is their will.  All wills are directed towards various ends, he continues.  These ends are either absolute or relative.  But, relative ends can only give rise to hypothetical imperatives.  So, if the categorical imperative is indeed an imperative arising from the constitution of the universe (and not just something that Kant is making up), then the will of rational agents must also have an end that is an end in itself, and that is universally shared by all.
•	For Kant, the end that is universally shared by all rational beings is rational nature itself.  Rational nature is an end in itself, he says, and not a means to an end.  
•	From this, Kant derives his third formulation of the categorical imperative:  “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only.”
•	He goes on to test this against his four categories of duties.  (See notes for lecture 1), and finds that this formulation too is consistent with the four classes of duties that he has outlined.
•	Kant thinks that he has shown from this that the will is not subject to the categorical imperative, but is in fact the source of the categorical imperative (as a legislator is the source of a law).  However, the c.i. is nonetheless objective since it is universal and not merely general. 
•	Kant admits that the duties he has laid out are accessible by common sense alone, and that this difficult philosophical apparatus isn’t strictly speaking necessary to get to them.  However, he argues that, if we as ethical agents rely on our common sense alone, we risk becoming slave to our inclinations.  Relying on reason is more difficult and demanding but it ultimately does a better job of keeping us on the right track.
•	Kant’s criticism of the golden rule:  the golden rule is not universal because I might not want others to extend charity to me, but that does not mean that I don’t have a meritorious duty to extend charity to others.  More simply:  we should aim to do unto others not as we would have done unto us, but rather as they would have done unto themselves.  This is universal.  So, while the c.i. and the golden rule are similar, they are not the same, and should not be confused.