Beginner's Guide to Kant's Moral Philosophy

the first thing you need to know about cants moral philosophy is that he's not trying to convince you that morality exists if you're one of those people who goes oh morality is just an illusion and it doesn't really exist well then you're probably still going to think that when you're done reading Kant what he is doing is saying come on lads we all know that people behave in a way that they call moral at least some of the time morality it's a thing we do it and we talk about it so what's the best way to try and understand it he starts by asking what does it mean to be good and he says that the only thing that is good without qualification is the good will the will to do the right thing everything else money courage intelligence good looks those things can be used for good or evil but the will to do good is always good and it's not good because of what you can get out of it your rewards for being good again you could use them for good or ill the good will must be good in itself we don't always act according to the good will we are imperfect and sometimes we act according to our other desires but acting from the good will Kant says is the only way to really be moral consider a bartender who gets a new customer in their bar the bartender could give the customer the wrong change and save a bit of money but he decides not to he gives the customer the correct change Kant asks why did he do that if he did it because he was afraid of getting caught or because he wanted repeat business or even just because it makes him happy well then that's not a genuinely good action because it wasn't motivated by the goodwill it was motivated by the desire to get something else for Kant it's not the consequences of your actions that matter so much is that you do them for the right reasons the only genuinely good actions are the ones that you do purely out of a respect for the moral rules whatever those moral rules are and will come to them shortly crucially doing what somebody else tells you to do can't be good because whether it's God your parents or whoever if you're just following orders you're not acting from the goodwill you're acting in anticipation of some reward all punishment the goodwill has to come from you that's why moral reasons are so powerful and have such a hold on you it's because they actually come from you morality is a system of rules that you place on yourself respect for the rules always comes as a result of being a member of something so I respect the rules of YouTube because I'm a youtuber I respect the rules of my country because I'm a citizen Kant thought that moral rules come to us as a result of being rational beings as a result of having a mind rational here just means being able to listen to reasons and Kant thought that part of being able to do that is that there are some reasons that we cannot ignore and that apply to everyone okay this might all seem a little bit overwhelming so let me try and give you a peek behind the curtain here what Kant is trying to do is ground morality in logic he's trying to say that being bad actually does not make sense try as you might you cannot escape the laws of logic and Kant is trying to make morality as inescapable as logic by saying that ultimately it comes from the same place the built-in restrictions on the ways that it makes sense for people to think this leads us to the categorical imperative the categorical imperative just means the thing that you have to do all the time regardless of circumstance it's an imperative an order which applies categorically I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law now this is often misunderstood so stick with me Kant is not saying that you should only do something if it would be good for everyone to do that's not what he's saying if everybody stole stuff all the time yeah the world would be a pretty rotten place to live but that's not why can't thinks you shouldn't steal he says that you should only act if it makes sense for you to will everybody to act in the same way take lying for instance sometimes you might want to tell a lie Kant asks you to consider whether it makes sense to will that everybody lies whenever they want to in a world where everybody lies the whole concept of truth and lies would break down nobody would trust each other and in such a world you would not want to lie because it wouldn't get you any advantage there'd be no point if everyone was doing it remember the moral law has to come from you from your will so if you will to tell lies you have in fact contradicted yourself just as surely as if you broke the laws of logic your will must be consistent that's what the categorical imperative really says it's like thy will shall make sense you just gotta ask yourself does it make sense for me to will everybody to do what I want to do can't try to explain the categorical imperative in a number of different ways which is why he gives not just one but three different formulations of it he thought that moral rules were universal just as you are capable of listening to moral reasons so am i and so is everybody else this leads us to the second formulation act in such a way that you treat humanity whether in your own person or the person of another always as an end and never simply as a means this calls us to respect other people's status as beings of moral worth as well as to respect ourselves and cleave to our own inner moral voices this formulation does prompt some interesting questions for instance when I go to the bar am I not treating the barman as a means not an end I'm only talking to him because of what I can get out of him right same is true of doctors taxi drivers most people really and yes that's true but it's not really a problem for Kant so long as we remember that those barman and taxi drivers and so on have their own ends and it's not okay for us to step on them like I wouldn't enslave that barman and force him to serve me drinks that really would violate the categorical imperative but as long as he is producing the service voluntarily then that's okay for me to consume the product of it now if you've seen my series on Karl Marx you might be saying well hang on a minute Ollie do people really produce goods voluntarily under global capitalism and yeah okay that's a discussion we could have but that's how it's supposed to work for cat anyway the final formulation reminds us of the responsibility of being a moral being act as though through your Maxim's you could become a legislator of universal laws here Kant asks us to remember that we are always in a sense setting an example to other people in what we do we contribute to what is normal human behavior and we have a choice to make about whether to make that normal behavior good or not he also reminds us that the moral law has to come from us we place it on ourselves and sometimes we might have to do that against what our other desires are of course if you're very clever you'll have noticed that cants moral philosophy really depends on free will if you can't freely place the moral law on yourself then this whole project isn't going to fly that's something that didn't escape his notice either and it was central to his work on free will which is another story for another time so that's cants moral philosophy if you're ever lost just remember that the moral law has to come from within you and its chief commandment is thy will shout makes sense leave a comment telling me what you thought and for more philosophical videos from me every Friday please subscribe and if you'd like to support me in my efforts to put education onto YouTube then you can find philosophy tube on patreon this episode was filmed in YouTube space London as part of the YouTube's next up creator camp I want to say thank you to Carly TOEFL and Cameron Sanderson for being in it with me you can see them in the bar scenes and you can find links to their channels fellow

Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 753,485

Keywords: Kant, Immanuel Kant, Categorical Imperative, Deontology, Philosophy, Ethics, Morality, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Logic, Reason, Lying, Education, School, Olly Lennard, Oliver Lennard, Philosophy Tube, Shopkeeper

Id: mQ2fvTvtzBM

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2016