Reza Yaghoubi's essay “Kant, Autonomy and the Foundations of Liberal Ethics”

Kant, Autonomy and the Foundations of Liberal Ethics

Reza Yaghoubi

1- Background

Kant, like all past philosophers (barring a few), sought to define humanity's privileged position in nature and, by identifying the fundamental distinction between humans and other living beings, to regard humankind as the pinnacle of creation and the ultimate end of creation and nature. However, he could not, in the Aristotelian manner, bestow this status upon humans simply by deeming them rational. Firstly, considering the views of earlier modern philosophers, how could one be certain that animals do not possess the same degree of rationality and intelligence, and employ that reason and intelligence towards the good? Secondly, the claims of pure reason proved to be transcendental, and according to his philosophy, metaphysics cannot be presented as a science. Whatever the case, reason was not sufficient for this task, even though his ultimate reliance was always upon reason. Thus, he had to find another distinguishing characteristic in humans, and that was morality. The existence of a good will in humans makes them moral beings and allows them to be considered the primary and ultimate end of nature. But if morality consists of a set of values imposed upon us from outside, under the name of religion, societal decrees, or even the consequences of actions, how can its existence in humans be considered the source of their uniqueness and intrinsic purposiveness? He himself has an eloquent statement on this matter: "It is not enough to ascribe freedom to our will on whatever basis, if we do not have sufficient ground for ascribing it to all rational beings. For, since morality serves as a law for us only as rational beings, it must also hold for all rational beings; and since morality must be derived solely from the property of freedom, freedom must also be a property of the will of all rational beings." (G1, p.124).

Consequently, Kant believes that humans freely determine their own moral values. In the realm of ends, the human being is both legislator and subject. They are subject to values they themselves have established. In fact, what elevates humans to a lofty status and grants them an unparalleled position is their freedom in adopting the values created by the autonomous moral will. It is from this point that, in all three of his fundamental critiques, he prioritizes freedom over religion and morality. This is precisely the point that connects Kant to the Romantic movement, although he belongs strictly to neither the Enlightenment nor Romanticism.

Kant cannot accept that humans could simultaneously be the highest manifestation of creation and its intrinsic end, and yet be beings upon whom lofty values and beliefs are imposed from outside, beyond their control.

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, he states: "...rather, the value which he alone can bestow upon himself, and which consists in what he does, how and according to which principles he acts, not as a link in the chain of nature but in the freedom of his faculty of desire..." (Critique of the Power of Judgment, p.124). On this point, he is clearly influenced by Hume. Kant himself acknowledged that Hume awoke him from his dogmatic slumber. The precise point on which Hume exerted this influence upon him is a matter of debate, and volumes have been written about it. However, in my opinion, Hume's greatest influence on him is revealed in this point: when "one cannot derive an ought from an is," it actually makes him aware that, morally speaking, humans are not under the dominion of nature, that the realm of values is separate from the realm of causal necessities, and that what constitutes the special and fundamental distinction of humanity is not rationality but the autonomous will, which is the creator of moral oughts and values.

In 1784, a year before writing the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant published the essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in response to a question posed by Johann Friedrich Zöllner, in which he wrote: “Enlightenment is the ability of human beings to determine their own lives and to free themselves from the reins of others, and the fact that human beings reach maturity and choose for themselves what they do, whether good or bad, without relying heavily on any kind of authority or sovereignty, on the state, on parents, on nurses, on tradition, or on any established value upon which the entire weight of moral responsibility is placed” (The Roots of Romanticism, p. 122). At the beginning of the same essay, he says: “The motto of enlightenment is: Dare to use your own understanding,” (quoted from Collected Works of Immanuel Kant), which is originally taken from a Latin poem by Horace.

Kant was a contemporary of the first great revolutions of liberation and designed his moral system to be compatible with them. In this respect, he was certainly influenced by the Enlightenment. What prevents us from placing Kant in any of these categories and considering him a member of a specific movement (neither the Enlightenment nor Romanticism) is that, firstly, in terms of the breadth of his thought, he provided a system independent of these movements and gave rise to threads from which post-Enlightenment schools (such as German Idealism and Romanticism) would draw their ideas; and secondly, despite the evident influence of the Enlightenment upon him, the extent of his direct influence on later schools is mixed with ambiguity. For example, after the atrocities committed by the French revolutionaries, Kant was still optimistic about the revolution and never abandoned the belief that the French Revolution was, in any case, an experience on the right path, even if it had gone astray” (The Roots of Romanticism, p. 132).

2. Autonomy

By now it should have become clear on what grounds and why Kant emphasized the autonomy of the will and the intrinsic end-hood of the individual human being (individualism). Now we must clarify how he ties his moral system, based on autonomy, to the good will in such a way that it has a meaning other than libertinism and irrational behavior, and determines the rules of conduct. In more technical terms, how the autonomous will creates moral values. With what subtlety he arrives from this principle at his orderly, precise, and inviolable principle of deontology. There is no doubt that human beings set rules for their own behavior. Whatever these rules may be, good or bad, malevolent or benevolent. But since the human being is a rational creature and must behave in a way that not only makes living alongside others possible and allows him to enjoy their cooperation and collaboration, but also to treat human beings as intrinsically valuable entities that are valuable and ends in themselves without any reason. Therefore, he must formulate his individual rules (maxims) in such a way that if they were to become universal laws, he would deem himself worthy of the same treatment. In Kant's own words, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (G, 31). This rule, famous as the Golden Rule, bespeaks the existence of a good will in the human being. Something that has not only made him unique in nature but has also turned him into the ultimate end. The concept of duty also comes from here. In the third section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, he has a chapter with this title: "How is a Categorical Imperative Possible?" Kant first says that the human being, as an intelligent being, considers himself as belonging to the world of understanding, and only as an efficient cause does he give the name will to his causality. The will is a causality that belongs to the world of understanding. On the other hand, he also knows that he belongs to the world of sense, and his actions in the world of sense are mere appearances of the causality of the will, but the possibility of those actions from this will is unknown to him; therefore, actions, insofar as they belong to the world of sense, must be considered as determined by other appearances, i.e., desires and inclinations. Thus, as a member of the world of understanding, my actions would conform perfectly to the "principle of the autonomy of the pure will," and as a part of the world of sense, they must conform perfectly to the natural law of desires and inclinations, and consequently, be considered in accordance with the heteronomy of nature. (The former rests on the supreme law of morality, the latter on happiness). But because the world of understanding contains the ground of the world of sense, and hence also of its laws, and consequently is immediately legislative with respect to my will (which belongs entirely to the world of understanding), and must therefore also be conceived as such, I consider myself as rational, even though on the other side I am a being belonging to the world of sense, which is nonetheless obedient to the law of the world of understanding, a world whose laws contain the concept of freedom, and consequently contain the autonomy of the will; therefore, the laws of the world of understanding are categorical imperatives for me, and actions that conform to this principle are duties." (G, 137).

The good will in the human being is not a conditional matter but an absolute one. If the good will were conditional, the concept of duty could not be derived from it. A conditional will is not good at all, because it only persists as long as it fulfills a condition: "If you want your business to prosper, do not overcharge customers." But when overcharging has no effect on the level of customer demand (such as during a famine), this rule is lifted, and the person has no duty not to overcharge. He must always do so because he wants others also not to overcharge him always and in all circumstances (universal law). Therefore, he is always duty-bound not to overcharge. You will say, what difference does this have with consequentialism? The person behaves according to that rule so that, as a result, he will not be treated that way. This is a point Kant strongly opposes; he says it does not matter what you want to achieve, but only act according to duty. In addition to what we have already said, he clarifies this point with another formulation of the categorical imperative: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means, but always at the same time as an end," and we have previously explained why the human being is intrinsically an end and a purpose, not a means.

In fact, if we want to place him in one of these categories on this basis, we must say he is a contractualist, not a consequentialist. From here, we must open a new chapter that explains the discussion of value theory and the classifications of value in liberalism.

3- Theories of Value in Liberalism

Scholars categorize these theories under four headings: 1. Perfectionism (John Stuart Mill) 2. Pluralism (Isaiah Berlin) 3. Subjectivism (Hume) 4. Contractarianism (Kant, Rawls).

Before explaining each of the above, it is necessary to note that the common feature of all these theories is individualism, and if you remove individualism from any of them, they will no longer fall under liberal ethical theories and will belong to other schools. For example, Hobbes's contractarianism, which he derived from the state of nature, bears little relation to individualism, because first, in the state of nature, according to his famous phrase, "man is a wolf to man," and second, after the social contract, people delegate their power to the sovereign, and the members of society become like a colossal body that forms the body politic, with the sovereign as the head of that body ruling over the others. (For this reason, he depicted the political system as the gigantic monster Leviathan, shown on the title page of the first edition of his book with a bishop's crook and a sword as the two pillars of government). Nor does this type of contractarianism relate to Rousseau's contractarianism. Because according to Rousseau's contractarianism, the collective agreement is more important than the individual's agreement, and when the individual encounters the general will contrary to their own will, they only then realize that their will was mistaken! But Kant's contractarianism is based on the autonomous will of the individual. In the realm of values, the human being is both the legislator and the subject, and this is a kind of individual and internal contract that becomes universal and general. That is, when individual rules become universal laws through the categorical imperative.

John Rawls, who is the reviver of liberal contractarianism, emphasizes this point and, through the term "veil of ignorance," links his contractarianism with Kant's autonomy and thereby absolves his theory from heteronomy and the imposition of values. He wants to prove that when he speaks of the original position (state of nature), his meaning is the same as Kant's autonomy: "Thus the original position can be regarded as a procedural interpretation of Kant's concept of autonomy and the categorical imperative within the framework of an empirical theory. The principles that govern the realm of ends are those that would be chosen in such a position, and the description of this situation enables us to explain in what sense acting upon these principles expresses our nature as free and equal rational persons" (A Theory of Justice, p. 276, with translation edited). In his book Political Liberalism, with greater detail and more emphasis on the concept of autonomy, he explains how it functions as the veil of ignorance and establishes it as pure procedural justice (Political Liberalism, p. 160).

Among the other categories we mentioned for the theory of value, one is subjectivism or internalism (subjectivism), of which Hume is a prominent representative. In his view, what determines moral good and bad is not reason but sentiment. Which sentiment causes an action to be considered good or bad? The sentiment of sympathy (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 45). Another is pluralism, represented by Isaiah Berlin. In Berlin's view, since the domain of ethics and politics is separate from the domain of the natural, empirical, and mathematical sciences, one cannot claim in this domain that for every question there is only one single answer. Everyone has different answers to such questions, and monopolizing the answer leads to the violation of freedom, which is itself a kind of immorality. Thus, in his view, values are plural and not absolute, singular, or exclusive. The last of these is perfectionism, which, although it has non-liberal interpretations, its liberal interpretation belongs to John Stuart Mill, who considers freedom a condition for moral perfection, growth, and the flourishing of the individual. He developed this thought in his book On Liberty.

Conclusion

Since Kant was a child of the Enlightenment and a child of his time, he could not conclude from the Age of Reason that the human being is an ignorant child who must be taught good behavior through the hardship of punishment and reward or happiness and misery. In his view, the human being is a creature so noble that they themselves create their own values and, of their own free will, obey them. Otherwise, what would human nobility consist of, and why should humanity be the ultimate end of creation if it lacks the capacity to independently create correct values and obey them? This point not only did not weaken the foundations of his ethics but made them even more rigorous. It led him to reject the ancient and Christian eudaimonistic tradition and to regard duty and the good will as good in themselves and intrinsically, not for their consequences or their rewards and punishments. This point indicates something important: that freedom not only does not lead to moral corruption and the decay of the human spirit, but the entire moral worth of a human act lies in its being voluntary—not merely freedom of choice, but freedom in the creation of values and adherence to them. In fact, Kant wants to conclude that, contrary to many past teachings, the free human being in a state of freedom is not a corrupt, capricious creature, but a noble and moral being who creates duties and values by their own will, without compulsion, and adheres to them.

References:

-Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant, The Cambridge Kant German-English Edition, 2011 (G1).

-Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant, translated and edited by Mary Gregor, Cambridge University Press, 1997(G).

- Collected Works of Immanuel Kant, Delphi Classics, 2016.

- An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Edited, and with an Introduction, by J. B. Schneewind, Hackett Publishing Company, 1983.

-Critique of the Power of Judgment, Immanuel Kant, translated by Abdolkarim Rashidian, Ney Publishing, 1395.

-The Roots of Romanticism, Isaiah Berlin, translated by Abdollah Kowsari, Mahi Publishing, 1398.

-Political Liberalism, John Rawls, translated by Musa Akrami, Sales Publishing, 1397.

-A Theory of Justice, John Rawls, translated by Morteza Nouri, Markaz Publishing, 1397.

Kant, Autonomy and the Foundations of Liberal Ethics

Author: Reza Yaghoubi

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