Mastery Education Centre (Tung Chung)
English Comprehension
Chapter 5: Immanuel Kant / On motive (2)
1 Kant’s emphasis on human dignity informs present day
2 notions of universal human rights. More important, his account of
3 freedom figures in many of our contemporary debates about
4 justice. We distinguished three approaches to justice. The first
5 one, used by the utilitarians, says the way to define justice and to
6 determine the right thing to do is to maximize welfare, in the form
7 of collective happiness of society as a whole. The second
8 approach connects justice to freedom. Libertarians follow this
9 approach by claiming the just distribution of income and wealth
10 is whatever distribution arises from the free exchange of goods
11 and services in an undisturbed market. To regulate the market is
12 unjust, they maintain, for it violates the individual’s freedom of
13 choice. A third approach says justice means to give people what
14 they morally deserve – allocating goods to reward and promote
15 virtue. We will learn more about this virtue-based approach when
16 we study Aristotle in later chapters.
17 For now, let us focus on Kant. He rejects approach one
18 (maximizing welfare) and approach three (promoting virtue), for
19 neither of them respects human freedom. So Kant is a strong
20 advocate for approach two – to connect justice with freedom. But
21 he has a very special and demanding definition of “freedom” –
22 more demanding than the freedom of choice we exercise in a
23 market. He argues what we commonly think of as market freedom
24 or consumer choice is not true freedom, because it simply
25 involves satisfying desires we haven’t chosen in the first place.
26 Before we go back to his exalted ideas of freedom, let’s see why
27 he thinks the utilitarians are wrong to think of justice as a matter
28 of maximizing happiness.
The trouble with maximizing happiness
29 Kant rejects utilitarianism. By resting rights on some
30 calculation to produce the greatest happiness, he argues,
31 utilitarianism leaves rights vulnerable. The issue goes deeper:
32 trying to derive moral principles from the desires we happen to
33 have is the wrong way to think about morality. Just because
34 something gives the most people pleasure doesn’t make it right.
35 Christians (or anyone) thrown into lion pits for entertainment and
36 “50 pence for a night in the girl’s dorm” are two real-life examples
37 of this notion. In fact, no matter how massive the majority is, and
38 how intense it favours a certain law, does not make the law just.
39 Kant argues that morality cannot be based on merely
40 empirical considerations, such as interests, desires and
41 preferences people have at any given time. These factors are
42 variable and fortuitous, hence unable to serve as the basis for
43 universal moral principles – such as universal human rights. He
44 also makes a more fundamental point: basing moral principles on
45 preferences and desires – even the desire for happiness –
46 misunderstands the concept of morality. He claims, the utilitarian
47 principle “contributes nothing whatever toward establishing
48 morality, since making a man happy is quite different from
49 making him good and prudent, or astute in seeking his advantage
50 quite different from making him virtuous.” Basing morality on
51 desires destroys its dignity. It does not teach us how to
52 distinguish right from wrong, but only “how to calculate better”.
53 If desires and preferences cannot serve as the basis of
54 morality, what is left? One possibility is God, but that’s not Kant’s
55 answer. A Christian himself, Kant does not base morality on
56 divine authority. Instead, he argues that we can arrive at the
57 supreme principle of morality through the practice of what he
58 calls, “pure practical reason.” According to him, since we have a
59 close connection between our capacity of reason and our
60 capacity of freedom, we can reason our way to the moral law.
61 To elaborate further, Kant argues that every person is worthy
62 of respect, not because we own ourselves but because we are
63 rational beings, hence “capable of reason”; we are also
64 autonomous beings, capable of acting and choosing freely. It is
65 this extra level of “capability” that separates the basis of morality
66 in Kantian ethics from that in libertarian theory.
67 Kant doesn’t mean that we always succeed in acting
68 rationally, or in choosing autonomously. Sometimes we do and
69 sometimes we don’t. What matters is we have the capacity for
70 reason and for freedom, and this capacity is common to human
71 beings as such.
72 Kant readily concedes that our capacity for reason is not the
73 only capacity we possess. We also have the capacity to feel
74 pleasure and pain. Kant recognizes that we are sentient
75 creatures as well as rational ones. By “sentient”, he means we
76 respond to our senses and our feelings. Therefore Bentham was
77 right – but only half right. He was right to observe that we like
78 pleasure and dislike pain, but he was wrong to insist that they are
79 our “sovereign masters”. Kant argues that reason can be
80 sovereign, at least some of the time. When reason governs our
81 will, we are not driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avert
82 pain.
What is Freedom?
83 To make sense of Kant’s moral philosophy, we need to
84 understand his definition of freedom. We often think of freedom
85 as the absence of obstacles when doing what we want. Kant
86 disagrees. His concept of freedom is as stringent and demanding
87 as his opinion on morality’s basis.
88 Kant reasons as follows: when we, like animals, seek
89 pleasure or avoid pain, we aren’t really acting freely. We are
90 acting as the slaves of our appetites and desires. Why? Because
91 when we are trying to satisfy our desires, everything we do is for
92 the sake of some end given outside of us. I do this to assuage my
93 hunger, do that to slake my thirst, do something else to make a
94 living, and so on.
95 Let’s assume I’m trying to decide what flavour of ice cream to
96 order: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Espresso toffee crunch? I may think
97 of myself as exercising freedom of choice, but what I’m really
98 doing is trying to figure out which flavour will best please my
99 preferences – preferences I didn’t choose in the first place. Keep
100 in mind that Kant did not say satisfying our preferences is wrong.
101 His point is when we do so, we are not acting freely, but following
102 a determination given outside us. After all, I didn’t choose my
103 desire for espresso toffee crunch rather than vanilla. I just have
104 it. For Kant, true freedom only comes from a determination from
105 our insides, or in other words, when we act autonomously. What
106 the term “autonomous” truly means will be discussed next
107 lesson.
Part 1 (Lines 1-54)
1. How many approaches to justice is mentioned in paragraph 1? Please specify. Name
an individual or a group of people the follows the different approaches.
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2. What is the stance of Kant on the above approaches to justice? What are the reasons
behind his support or opposition towards these approaches?
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3. According to paragraph 2 (line 14-23), why does Kant think the freedom we
exercise in a market is not true freedom?
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4. According to paragraph 3 (line 24-31), What is the underlying reason for Kant to
reject utilitarianism, or more precisely, the use of collective welfare as the basis of
morality?
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5. Following the question above, can you think of another real-life or imaginary
situation where the welfare(happiness) of the majority from an action does not equates to
it being “morally right”? (you can use examples from the earlier chapters of the book)
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6. From paragraph 4 (line 32-42), what is the
a) apparent reason; and
b) underlying principle
that makes Kant suggest that empirical considerations (desire etc.) cannot be used as the
basis of morality?
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b)______________________________________________________________________
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7. From paragraph 5 (line 43-49), it was suggested that God (or other religious belief)
can be the basis of morality. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
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8. Referring to the above question, Kant does not agree with this idea. Imagine a
situation where our “pure practical reason (line 46-47)” contradicts with “divine authority
(line 45)”.
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9. According to Kant, why are we “capable of reason?”
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Part 2 (Lines 55-86)
10. After reading Kant’s view on utilitarianism, a person claims in defense, “We can
only follow our reason some of the time, but we can always follow our desires. Therefore,
using desire for happiness as the basis of morality is more consistent and relatable.” How
do you retort (反駁) this claim? (read line 55-67 for help)
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11. Why is Bentham only “half right” according to Kant?
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12. According to Kant, we are not free when we act for some ends given outside of us,
e.g. desires, preferences, etc. (line 72-76) What then, would be an end given INSIDE of
us? Give your opinion.
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13. Read line 77-86. The author claims “we did not choose our desire…… we just have
it.” Do you agree that our desires involve no choice at all?
Think of some of your preferences (favourite dish, favourite novel, games you have the
most fun with). Do you remember why you liked them? If there is a reason after all,
doesn’t that mean we did make a choice to “pick a favourite”?
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14. Find a word from the article that is similar in meaning to the words below.
i) dignified (paragraph 2) __________________
ii) big (paragraph 3) __________________
iii) experiential (paragraph 4) __________________
iv) unpredictable (paragraph 4) __________________
v) emotional (paragraph 7) __________________
vi) harsh (paragraph 8) __________________
