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KANTIAN DEONTOLOGY
Immanuel Kant
Subjective Value
 Internal traits of character
 External advantages
 Happiness itself
Good Will
 Only thing necessarily and always good
 Good in itself, not consequentially
What does a good will will?
 To do duty for duty’s sake
 Respect for duty / moral law is motive
 Only actions so motivated have true moral worth
MORAL LAW:
 necessarily binding objective principles of pure practical reason
 related to will through imperatives/ commands
 “One ought to do x.”
 categorical imperative
Categorical Imperative as Universalizability
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law.
Tests:
 incoherence in conception
 contradiction in will
Connection between good will and moral law through rational being as an end in itself.
Categorical Imperative as Respect for Persons (Ends in Themselves)
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the
person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a
means.
Price // Dignity
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Hypothetical Imperatives
 “If you want x, you ought to do y.”
 conditional on having a particular end (desire, want)
 willing end entails willing means
 even if all people want their own happiness, this fact can only be used to derive
hypothetical imperatives
 lack the inescapable, necessary, universal force of moral requirements
So cannot base morality in any subjective, contingent or empirical feature of human
beings; cannot base morality on any subjective theory of the good.
DUTIES: perfect and imperfect; to self and others.
Onora O’Neill Kant’s End in Itself formulation of the Categorical Imperative (CI)
applied to poverty and famine (compared with utilitarianism)
Kant’s ethics focus on obligations (not results – utilitarianism; not entitlements – rights
theory); the focus is on which actions are obligatory or forbidden.
Supreme Principle of Morality (CI): formulated as the End in Itself Principle (also called
the Respect for Persons Principle)
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or
in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as
an end.
Maxim: the maxim of an act or policy or activity is the underlying principle of it.
Is an act, policy, activity, institution required by, ruled out by, or merely compatible with,
maxims that avoid using others as mere means and maxims that treat others as ends in
themselves?
Kantianism provides a test of proposed actions, a more reasonable decision procedure
than utilitarianism.
We use others as mere means if what we do reflects a maxim to which they could not in
principle consent.
(In)Justice: false promises; maxims of deceptions generally; coercion; manipulation;
exploitation of powerlessness, poverty, vulnerability.
Justice is a perfect duty.
Benevolence: we have a duty to help others live rational and autonomous lives, lives of
value as ends in themselves. Famine, poverty, etc., threaten the very capacity for, or
ability to exercise, autonomy. We are obligated to relieve, help, reduce, etc., such
conditions.
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Benevolence is an imperfect duty.
Benevolence cannot be displayed by paternalistic actions (whereas paternalistic actions
might promote the greatest happiness).
Philip Kitcher Human Cloning
Reproductive cloning (Dolly the sheep 1997)
If cloning is done to produce a certain sort of person, with values imposed from without,
it will be an immoral violation of the clone’s human autonomy.
Three cases for consideration:
1) Dying child who needs a kidney.
2) Grieving widow, who wants to clone her brain-dead daughter.
3) Loving lesbians.
Are 1, 2, or 3, consistent with treating each other as ends in themselves?
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