Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Freedom, Autonomy, and Morality
Kant’s Categorical Imperative and Practical Reason
The categorical imperative, a concept from Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, extends the science performed by theoretical reason into the realm of morality. Kant addresses the noumena, previously excluded from scientific understanding. While we cannot know the noumenon (the “self”) in its essence, we can understand “what it should be.” Practical reason, therefore, takes precedence over pure reason.
Practical reason guides the will to act through practical principles, which can be either:
- Maximum (subjective): Valid for individual subjects.
- Imperatives (goals valid for all men):
- Hypothetical: Pursuing a specific goal.
- Categorical: Not pursuing a specific goal, but acting according to universal moral law.
Categorical imperatives are universal and necessary moral laws that determine the will to act, not towards an end, but simply out of volition. This is a synthetic a priori principle of practical reason. A moral law or categorical imperative dictates: “Act so that the maximum (subjective) guiding your behavior can become a strict universal law for all men.” It dictates how to act, not what to do. The moral law is explained by accepting freedom as its foundation and condition.
Characteristics of Kantian Ethics
Freedom, autonomy, and formalism are the three key characteristics of Kantian ethics. Freedom is defined as “independence of will on the natural law of phenomena.” The will can be determined by itself, without relying on any external end. This leads to an autonomous ethic, as opposed to a heteronomous ethic where the will is determined by external purposes like happiness.
Ethics based on the pursuit of happiness are considered heteronomous because introducing external purposes pollutes the purity of intention and the will, resulting in hypothetical, not categorical, imperatives. In Kantian ethics, we should not act to achieve happiness, but out of pure love and respect for duty (Kantian rigor). By acting for the sake of duty, we become worthy of happiness. The moral law excludes the influence of inclinations and impulses that can interfere with moral action, because humans are sentient beings. The will should be submitted to the single feeling of absolute respect for duty, thereby shaping and binding it.
The Postulates of Practical Reason
The highest good consists of virtue and happiness. Achieving this is difficult, and human existence is finite. Therefore, we must postulate the immortality of the soul, which allows for infinite progress towards moral perfection. In pursuing virtue and observing the moral law, one becomes worthy of happiness. Virtue and happiness are not joined by the laws of the sensible world, but by God, who blends the two elements. God serves as the example upon which we rely to fulfill our duty.
Through these principles, metaphysics and ethics are included within objective reality, giving rise to the transcendental ideas of pure reason: the reality of the soul as immortal, the reality of the world as a realm of human freedom, and God as a guarantee of order. These assumptions do not pose noumena as theoretical knowledge, but as a practical need to achieve the highest good. Practical reason, therefore, has primacy over pure reason because it expands its field. Metaphysics, whose possibility had been ruled out by pure reason, is made possible by practical reason and morality.