Q&A: The Categorical Imperative
The Categorical Imperative
Question
Hello.
I’m having trouble understanding Kant’s “categorical imperative.”
Suppose I’m faced with the question of concealing ten shekels from tax money for the sake of a poor person.
According to the “categorical imperative,” I should not steal, since I would not want everyone to steal as a general law. But on the other hand, I actually would want every person who faces a situation of concealing an insignificant amount of money for a poor person to do so. So what exactly does the categorical imperative accomplish?
Answer
This is one of the common difficulties with the categorical imperative. Kant, for example, forbade lying in every case, even to save a life. The reasoning is that we would not want people to lie. But that is not necessarily true, since we actually would want people to lie in order to save lives (the general loophole, for example: it is forbidden to lie ever, except when it is necessary to save a life). It is always a question of how to formulate the law so that it will be general. There are many ways to generalize it.
But even so, it is incorrect to conclude from this that the categorical imperative is worthless. Kant’s way of thinking is correct as a conceptual framework for morality. That framework has to be filled in with common sense and moral intuitions, all of which operate within that framework (they determine what is a reasonable generalization and what is not). I think one of the respects in which the categorical imperative is strongest is the series of difficulties I brought in the fourth notebook in volume 3 (tax evasion, voting in elections). There you see six actions that have no direct practical outcome, and yet it is clear to everyone that they are forbidden. The only explanation for that is the categorical imperative; see there.
Discussion on Answer
I do agree that moral motivation is indeed the core of morality. And consequentialist considerations are not the moral consideration. Still, the “imperative” seems to me rather emptied of concrete meaning
I explained why the imperative is meaningful. Your questions point to what I called “analyticity,” meaning the view that if there is no logical-mathematical decision, then there is no decision at all. There is such a thing as common sense, and it operates within the categorical imperative (what counts as a general law). The examples in the notebook (tax evasion and voting in elections) cannot be understood without the categorical imperative. If you mean to establish a general law in which everyone is obligated to vote except me, then that is not a general law, except in a formal-analytic sense. If that is your approach, then no law exists or is of any use for anything.
So I’m still left with the difficulty. How can I decide by the “imperative” in a concrete situation like tax evasion? There is no escaping an unformulated moral intuition, and that’s the end of the “categorical imperative.” I haven’t noticed what it contributes for me. I also didn’t see how the examples in the notebook help here (there too one can say that I would want a general law that people should not evade taxes and should not murder, except for this specific case, etc.)