15 Mar 2023
This is part 2 of my old philosophy-essays-turned-blog-posts. Perhaps one day, I’ll just combine the two posts, but right now, I should be studying for STEP.
Unlike the previous post which focused on ontology, this post will apply rationalism and empiricism to morality. Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill were two influential philosophers who held divergent views on the orgin of morality. In Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, he delineates his contrasting concepts of autonomy and heteronomy, terms which describe whether the will is determined by things internal (autonomy) or external (heteronomy) to itself. Autonomy of the will is foundational to Kant’s moral theory, and his beliefs regarding pure practical reason and heteronomy would have led him to reject the utilitarian theory described in John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, which was published around 60 years after Kant’s death.
John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism explains his aforementioned moral theory. Utility is the fundamental principle: “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill 7). Utilitarians believe morally good actions are those that increase the total amount of happiness in the world. Happiness, as defined in the utilitarian sense, is the combination of pleasure and absence of pain. To Mill, these “are the only things desirable as ends” for “all desirable things… are desirable either for pleasure inherent in themselves or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain” (Mill 7). Other potentially desirable things, such as virtue or money, can eventually be desirable in themselves–but only first through a strong association with pleasure and happiness. Evidently, moral worth in utilitarianism is defined by the consequences–namely the increase in pleasure or decrease in pain–so Mill does not believe that the motive or internal state of an agent affects the moral worth of the action, although they do reflect the worth of the agent himself.
Kant’s ideas regarding reason are important for understanding his overall moral theory and his potential oppositions to utilitarianism. In the Preface to his Groundwork, Kant contrasts empirical philosophy with rational philosophy. Empiricism, Kant claims, “is based on the ground of experience,” while pure philosophy “presents its doctrines solely from a priori principles” (Kant 3; 3-4). Thus, pure philosophy concerns itself with objective principles–those that can be derived using reason or logic alone. Metaphysics–the field to which his work is setting the foundations for–is the application of pure philosophy to the physical world. (As an aside, if you read my previous post, you may recall that in Hume’s fork, Hume explicitly argues that conclusions derived from pure philosophy have no significance in the physical world. This post, however, focuses more on applying rationalism to morality, which I personally believe has more validity than applying rationalism to the nature of our existence.)
The will is central to Kant’s moral philosophy; he opens his Groundwork with the assertion that “it is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed beyond it, that could be taken to be good without limitation, except a good will” (Kant 9). He continues by defining several terms:
The will is practical reason–but it is not always pure, and subjective conditions or inclinations of the individual occasionally prevent the will from acting according to pure reason i.e. a priori principles. The will therefore does not always obey the imperatives which tell the will what it ought to do.
Kant’s moral theory contains two different types of imperatives:
Autonomy and heteronomy specifically refer to how the will is determined. According to Kant, everyone’s rationality is an end to itself. The will, he says, needs an objective end, and since our “inclinations themselves… are so far from having an absolute worth,” the end in itself of our rational will must ultimately be rational nature itself (Kant 40). Since every person has the same rational grounds to see himself as an end to itself, the end is made universal, and every rational nature becomes an end in itself. From here, Kant develops “the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will” (Kant 43). From the first formulation of the categorical imperative, any maxim one acts on should be able to be willed into a universal law, so the will, as a legislator, creates universal laws that the will itself is also subject to (Kant 44). In this context, autonomy refers to self-rule, or self-determination; the will “is a law to itself,” and therefore is determined only by the universal legislation that it creates based on pure reason (Kant 51). Thus, the autonomous will is also one determined on the objective grounds of reason. This may seem contradictory; if the will is only determined by itself, how is reason determining the will? The will itself, however, is practical reason, and thus to be governed by itself is to be governed by pure practical reason or reason based on a priori principles and the categorical imperative. The heteronomous will, on the other hand, is the opposite and is determined by something outside of the will. These can be any sort of subjective or empirical inclinations that are not derived from objective principles of reason.
Based on these definitions, Kant would consider Mill’s utilitarian theory to be heteronomous. What induces pleasure and absence of pain in an individual, Kant would argue, are subjective conditions of that individual’s character. If the utilitarian will was somehow autonomous, then the will, as a universally legislating will, would necessarily create universal laws and choose maxims that could be applied universally based on the utilitarian principle. For example, a universal law might be not to lie. However, as Mill points out, “even this rule… admits possible exceptions”; there could be cases when lying actually preserves or increases happiness more than telling the truth (Mill 23). In general, the magnitude of pleasure or pain is determined by “the general suffrage of those who are familiar with [it]” (Mill 11). However, if one were to examine more specific individuals, one might find individuals who disagree with the general suffrage; for example, a certain individual could find pleasure in something that most others find painful. Based on these examples, the universally legislating will, if consistent with utilitarian principles, could not then be universal because the maxims cannot always be willed for everyone. This creates a contradiction, and thus the utilitarian will is not autonomous. Ultimately, this is because experiences of pleasure and pain are subjective and comprise an incentive outside of the will itself.
Indeed, this is consistent with the autonomous will’s governance by pure practical reason. One could perhaps attempt to frame the universal law to not be something specific such as “do not lie,” and instead to be a general statement, such as only perform actions that promote pleasure and pain. However, not only are pleasure and pain subjective, the foundational premise of Mill’s philosophy is also subjective. Mill’s assertion that happiness, and by extension pleasure and absence of pain, are the only ends desirable is based around the “sole evidence… that people actually do desire happiness” (Mill 35). This is an empirical reasoning, not one based from a priori principles. Thus, a will that acts on utilitarian maxims is not autonomous because the driving principle is not pure practical reason consistent with the categorical imperative but rather incentives to achieve various pleasures or to avoid various pains.
Furthermore, Kant believes that happiness is impossible to be determined objectively with reason. He claims that “happiness is so indeterminate a concept that, even though every human being wishes to achieve it… he can never say determinately and in agreement with himself what he actually wishes and wants” (Kant 31). The issue of maximum well-being necessarily involves current happiness and future happiness to the end of time (Kant 31). However, actions intending on increasing happiness must necessarily be empirical because one cannot, without omniscient perception, determine exactly what will maximize happiness. Thus, one must make the best guess one can from one’s past experiences. In fact, Mill states something similar, saying that people do not calculate the effects of every action, but rather “mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions” to promote or impede happiness (Mill 24). Thus, the determination of the amount of happiness requires empirical experience, so any moral theory centered around the promotion of happiness is necessarily heteronomous. Happiness is disconnected rationally from morality; Kant asserts “making a human being happy is something entirely different from making him good” (Kant 53). This is exemplified by the general social view that some people, such as terrible criminals, should be punished and do not deserve happiness–so the issue of morality with regards to them cannot be united by a universal rational principle.
A heteronomous moral theory cannot be valid, according to Kant, because it violates the absolute necessity of morality. Kant begins with the premise “that a law, if it is to hold morally, i.e. as a ground of obligation, must carry with it absolute necessity” (Kant 4). To be absolutely binding, the law must come from a priori principles because these principles are unchanging. If morality is absolutely binding, we must be able to will that everyone follows the same laws all the time, giving rise to the first form of the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative itself is also always binding since it must be followed for its own sake. Hypothetical imperatives, on the other hand, are conditional because actions are permissible or good to accomplish a certain end. Heteronomous wills give rise to hypothetical imperatives, not categorical ones. If something outside of the will affects the will, a subjective incentive is introduced and the will is determined by an alien interest to accomplish some end given by that subjective incentive. Thus, the “actions… are subjectively contingent,” and cannot represent a moral law that must be followed (Kant 27). If the incentive is removed or the subjective condition is changed, the hypothetical imperative, which aims at a certain end, will lose its relevance. As a result, autonomy is vital to a proper moral theory through its universally legislating will. Kant states that the “principle of autonomy is… not to choose in any other way than that the maxims of one’s choice are also comprised as universal law in the same willing,” thus drawing a direct link between autonomy and the categorical imperative (Kant 51). This link prompts Kant to comment that “morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will” (Kant 51).
Additionally, the moral worth in Kant’s framework differs from the moral worth in utilitarianism. Kant, as stated earlier, believes the only good thing without limitation is a good will. Thus, morality comes from a will that follows the categorical imperative and acts according to the moral law described by it. The moral worth is within the form, or the justification, of the maxims the will decides on (Kant 15). This means that moral worth is not just conforming with duty–“the necessity of an action from respect for the law”–but resolving on actions out of duty, which is to say following maxims that specifically in their form obey the categorical imperative (Kant 16). However, with utilitarianism, its heteronomy means that the will cannot have moral value because it is not governing itself. This leads to Mill’s assertion that the moral worth is in the action itself and the accomplishment of some end rather than the will’s accordance with pure reason–an assertion that is incompatible with Kant’s theory.
In general, empirical claims cannot be the foundation of moral law, according to Kant. He states that “one could not give morality worse counsel than by seeking to borrow it from examples,” which is exactly what Mill believes we should do in order to build an understanding of the types of actions that promote happiness (Kant 23). Morality must exist outside of mere experience, and Kant gives the example that “pure sincerity in friendship can no less be required of everyone even if up to now there had never been a sincere friend,” further developing his belief that there must be a priori reason dictating the will (Kant 22-23). Experiences are influenced by conditions, but morality must be pure and elevated. The law of utility also cannot be extrapolated to other rational beings. Kant states that because morality is based on reason, it must apply to all rational beings (Kant 37). That is why autonomy is important; it allows the moral theory to be generalized to be consistent for everyone. However, Mill’s theory, by being heteronomous, depends on certain facets of human nature, namely that we find happiness in pleasure and the absence of pain. This cannot become a universal moral theory applied to all rational beings.
Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill fundamentally disagreed on the origins and principles of morality. Kant believed in universal laws that must be followed according to pure practical reason and a priori principles. Mill, on the other hand, believed in the idea of utility, the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Kant would have regarded Mill’s theory as being heteronomous or characterized by a will that is not governed by itself via reason. This heteronomy would have led Kant to reject the grounds that utilitarianism is based upon.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Mary Gregor and Jens Timmerman, Revised Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism and the 1868 Speech on Capital Punishment. Edited by George Sher, 2nd ed., Hackett Publishing Company, 2001.