Being moral, free and reasonable at the same time
Do you ask yourself things like am I a good person? When are we free as human beings? Which is a moral worthy action? Or are there specific moral lows that can apply to everybody? So did Immanuel Kant. And he gave us some good answers.
If you studied religion, you concluded that it attempted, among other things, to help us follow moral lows. Kant tried to replace religious authority with the authority of reason. Basically, he tried to ground morality in logic. So what you ought to do to become moral?
A moral worthy action is linked to the motive. It’s not the consequences of your actions that matter so much, is that you do something for the right reason. Only one kind of motive is consistent with morality, the motive of duty. And the motive of duty is linked to freedom.
Explaining Kant’s ideas thoroughly: a good will must be good in itself. The idea of a good will is closer to the idea of a “person of good will”. What makes a good person good is his possession of a will that is mainly controlled out of a respect for the moral lows. And the good will has to come from you, not because a religion or somebody else told you to do so. Morality, in these terms, is a system of rules that you place on yourself.
But, how are we gonna end with one moral low? Kant says that human beings inevitably feel this law, if they exercise their reason. People are able to listen to reasons and there are some reasons that can be applied to everyone. In other words, reason is something we share with everyone, as rational beings, regardless of upbringing, our values or any other circumstances.
And how can reason determine the will? To answer this question we have to analyze Kant’s Categorical Imperative (CI), that he is mostly famous for. There are two different commands of reason that Kant calls them imperatives. A hypothetical imperative that means, in simple words, that if I want X then I do Y. It’s means ends reason. A categorical imperative means the thing that you have to do all the time, independent of any further purposes. Now we see a connection between morality, freedom and reason. We are free when we act out of a categorical imperative.
But, what is the categorical imperative and how I recognize it? Kant gives three formulations of the CI. The first one is the formula of the universal low of nature: “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”. For example, sometimes you might want to tell a lie. Imagine how it would be if everybody practiced that. In a society that everyone lies, the whole concept of truth and lies has no point. (Remember the quote in Chernobyl tv series: “what is the cost of lies ? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories).
The second formula is the humanity formula. We should never act in such a way that we treat humanity as a means only but always as an end in itself. That means we respect other people as beings of moral worth. The final formulation of the CI is “the Idea of the will of every rational being as a will that legislates universal law.” We are the source of moral lows, we are responsible for being moral. Our behavior, in a sense, contributes to human behavior.
To conclude, If you want to be a good person it depends on your will. If your will is determined by reason, then you choose, not under the rule of your own passions or inclinations, but on the basis of the moral low. It seems that free will and a will under moral law is the same thing. Being selfish or corrupted suddenly appears stupid. If you don’t want to be a moral person, you admit that you don’t want to be free. But don’t forget, if you become moral only for the reason that you don’t want to be stupid, you are not on the same page with Kant.
Sources that inspired me: