Michael Durham and Dr. C. Terry Warner, Philosophy
Of the many questions in modern meta-ethical debates, the question, “Why be moral?” immediately stands out as one of the most provocative. It seems to embody the moral skepticism notoriously rampant in contemporary society, insolently questioning not just particular moral demands, but the power and validity of any moral demands whatsoever.
Kant’s ethics provides an attractive answer to this question by grounding morality in the nature of rationality itself. Kant claims that any rational being, just by virtue of its rationality, is committed to obeying objective moral laws.1 Thus, morality on Kant’s account is an inalienable part of being human, instead of just matter of culture or a prudential measure to keep society from falling apart. My original goal was to defend Kant’s ethical theory against some specific critics. These critics attempted to cast doubt on Kant’s ethical system by deriving absurd conclusions from Kant’s fundamental ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative. I intended to show that these absurdities only resulted from assuming an egoistic conception of rational agency, and that on Kant’s own conception of reason such problems would not arise. However, as my research progressed, the defense began to seem more important that the particular issues it was meant to resolve. Accordingly, I have decided to focus less on the details of Kant’s ethical theory and more on the efficacy of his conception of reason in explaining and encouraging the kind of self-transcendence which must be the basis of morality.
I begin by arguing that ones, conception of reason is a crucial factor in any attempt to justify morality whatsoever. Because any attempt to justify morality involves giving reasons why one should be moral, what counts as a reason will determine what kind of a justification of morality is possible. Furthermore, if morality is not ultimately grounded in reason itself, so that it is never rational to be immoral, then morality becomes irrelevant. For if the thing one rationally should do is not necessarily what one morally ought to do, then why should one care about what one morally ought to do?2
If, then, the only sufficient justification for morality is to prove that it is inherently part of being rational, why is Kant’s conception of reason better suited to this purpose than other conceptions? To show this, I examine two other conceptions of reason, together with their implications for morality. First, I examine the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of morality. In both cases, morality consists in the soul’s being governed by reason. Furthermore, it is clear that both conceive reason as having access to objective truth about the way things should be. Because of this, the grounding of morality in reason is trivial; morality is rational simply because morality is among the truths which reason can directly grasp. This natural, almost obvious link between morality and rationality in Classical philosophy becomes much more problematic with the rise of Modern philosophy. Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am’ shifts the focus of philosophy inward to the subject. Subjective consciousness and sensory impressions, rather than transcendent truth, become the foundation for the mind’s knowledge. Reason becomes a faculty for organizing the subjective data of consciousness, and thus loses its ability to ground a self-transcendent morality.’ We are thus left with an instrumental conception of reason according to which reason merely finds the best means to satisfy the passions. I argue that it is impossible to ground morality on this conception of reason, and indeed that this conception of reason leads to moral skepticism. It is as if the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am” has separated the rational subject from morality; modern ethics needs a moral equivalent, an “I think, therefore I ought,” to close the gap.
Toward this end, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason shows the inadequacy of the instrumental conception of reason by asserting reason’s essentially spontaneous nature. According to Kant, even in human knowledge, reason is not just a mechanical faculty for making inferences. Reason does make inferences, but perhaps more significantly, it seeks first principles which unify the various concepts we receive from experience. We are thus able to find order in the chaos of experience-not because that order already exists in some intelligible realm of ideas, but because reason’s idea of such an order drives reason to create it. I argue that reason’s search for systematic unity can also be applied to the practical sphere, where it drives the rational agent to act not just in accordance with his or her own personal ends, but according to a possible systematic unity of the ends of all rational agents. This consideration for others desires and purposes can serve as a basis for morality. Thus, the very guiding principle of reason which demands explanations to questions like “Why be moral?” also demands a moral deliberative stance.
Reason’s ability to find its own order in chaos is intimately connected with its freedom. If reason were not free, any order we perceived in the world would be necessary, and we would not be able to imagine any other. Similarly, reason’s freedom makes it possible for humanity to look beyond itself, because reason is not compelled to consider only personal interests. However, because this self-transcendence is not automatic, how reason understands itself matters. If reason sees itself as the slave of the passions, it probably will become such. Perhaps this is why Kant saw such an urgent need for a critique of pure reason-only by coming to know its own potential can reason reach its full moral stature.
References
- Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton, New York: Harper (1964) 94.
- Richard Fumerton, Reason and morality, Ithaca: Cornell UP (1990) 85.
- Charles Davis, “Reason, Tradition, Community: The Search for Ethical Foundations”, in Foundations Of Ethics, ed. Leroy Rouner, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press (1983) 54.
- Susan Neiman, The Unity of reason, New York: Oxford UP (1994) 66.