A rchive Date
[ 10-05-2004 ]
Category
[ Philosophy ]
sub-Categoy
[ Immanuel Kant ]
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[http://www.byov.com/Tom/essays/nhc.html
Weakness of Will, and the Weakness of It
Non-Hypothetical Clarification
Thomas K. Javoroski 1998
In the world of contemporary philosophy, a great many doors have been left open through which one may rather readily, though perhaps not easily, launch an attack on the theories of Immanuel Kant. Through one such door goes Philippa Foot, in her work entitled Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.
As the title would suggest, Foot’s main goal is to refute Kant’s claim, which has been echoed by a majority of philosophers since him, that morality solely makes up the class of categorical imperatives, and more precisely, that morality cannot consist of hypothetical imperatives. To what end she attempts this is rather unspecified, but it is enough here to state that she does.
It is my hope here to show that Foot is in error, regarding hypothetical and non-hypothetical imperatives, and also in her claim as to the imperative force of non-hypotheticals.
Foot distinguishes hypothetical concerns from non-hypothetical (categorical) concerns in the following traditional way: non-hypothetical judgments tell us what we need to do, and are not influenced in any way by our desires and wants. "We should help injured people" could easily be an example of a categorical judgment (and here I will not bother to attempt to discover whether Kant or anyone else would agree; it is merely used as a handy example). The situation does not hinge on what the helping party wants; rather it simply states what must be done. Hypothetical imperatives consist of a means/end combination, of the form "If you want X, you should do Y." Non-hypothetical judgments have an "inescapability"(1) that is missing in hypothetical cases, where the "required" action holds no weight is we do not want the ends.
One of Foot’s initial points is to show how morality and etiquette both belong under the realm of non-hypothetical judgments. This she does to bring into question the strength, the commanding force, of a moral categorical imperative, and to prove perhaps that there is no moral imperative at all.
Rules of etiquette, Foot holds, have the same inescapability that moral rules claim. There is no question of whether you should do Y if you want X; if you don’t do Y, you will be looked on as rude, or boorish. And this will happen regardless of what you want, or if you are in some special circumstance. From here then, Foot can say that using should in this non-hypothetical manner leads us to a categorical imperative, just as using a non-hypothetical moral should leads us to the same. She then claims that Kantians would not want to admit that matters of etiquette are non-hypothetical, and so they state that matters of etiquette do not hold the same "automatic reason-giving force"(2) that moral matters do. At this point, then, she questions the reason-giving force of moral claims.
Before going any further, however, I would like to turn to the matter of etiquette judgments being non-hypothetical. To refute this is not just to say that "what we are really saying is if you want to follow rules of etiquette, you must do X." For if that holds, then one could say of morality "what we are really saying is that if you want to be moral, you must do X," and that is not what we wish to say at all.
But certainly, most philosophers would agree that moral claims have significantly more weight than claims of etiquette. Where is the difference? How can both be non-hypothetical, both holding the same force? I would claim that rules of etiquette in fact have a good number of exceptions to them, and this would remove them from the scope of non-hypothetical.
Consider the following: surely in modern society, it is excepted that other cultures have other ways of operating, other forms of etiquette very different from our own. Do we not for the most part accept that members of other societies are not ready and willing to shake hands at every opportunity, or that they may wear their hats into places of worship? Do not some people accept us even when we wear our shoes into their house, or when we make eye contact for too long? These are all plausible circumstances, and in each, we do not think the person is breaking a rule of etiquette, for we do not think the rule applies to that person. And suddenly rules of etiquette have qualifiers. If you are from this society, or want to act like members of this society, you should do X when presented with Y.
The latter is obviously not a case of a categorical imperative, as the person’s desires are expressly stated in the rule. The explanation of former is a bit more involved, and goes something like this: Kant’s categorical imperative comes in a number of forms, but the most common versions state that the considered action should be thought of as being willed into universal law. If we preface the etiquette rule with the clause "if you are from this society", we have taken away the universal aspect of the rule. I could just as well state "if your name is Tom, and you live in Iowa, you should steal from the rich." It is in this way that rules of etiquette do not have the same force as moral rules; they are not non-hypotheticals.
It still seems that Foot has an argument left, as her questioning of the imperative nature of morality can be taken even without the confusion presented by the status of etiquette. In essence, Foot questions where the "should" in the categorical imperative gets it’s ability to impart, or to be itself, a reason for action.
To Foot, it is not irrational or inconsistent for someone to make the statement "I’m immoral, and I don’t care." His actions may all be consistent with each other, and they may follow rationally from his desires. How can this coexist with the imperative nature of moral law? Foot wants to say that somehow the moral "should" is given more weight simply because we are taught that it should have more weight. We learn that a moral imperative is something we must follow, and we do, feeling Foot says the "binding force"(3) of morality that we have been incultured to feel. She doesn’t seem certain what this binding force is, whether it be a mental compulsion or an emotional attachment, but whatever it is, it does not impair our ability to reasonably refuse to follow the rules of morality.
Is Foot correct, and if not, what is the driving force behind morality? After a fashion, Kant can be seen to be appealing to an innate value of morality in humans. Somehow, we will value morality, and being moral, simply by knowing that it exists. According to Kant, humans enforce sensibility upon a noumenal universe, including the laws of science and nature, and therefore we also are able to enforce our own morality, in accordance with noumenal ethics. In other words, we impose our own laws of actions upon our intentions.
Kant relied heavily on rationality for his moral base. First, will that your action is universal law. Now look at the consequences of your actions. Based on those potential consequences, would you rationally be able to carry out that same action in the future? If not, you cannot morally perform the action now. The classic example is promising falsely to gain money. If everyone promised falsely to gain money, the very act of promising would become corrupt and untenable. Therefore, it is morally unacceptable to promise falsely to gain money.
It seems in one sense that Kant simply wants and expects people to realize this rational approach to morality, and to follow it, not out of self-preservation or self-promotion, but simply out of a duty to morality itself.(4) Whether Kant does this competently is not up for discussion here, as many philosophers have put a great deal of time into it so far, and to cover it satisfactorily would go beyond the scope of this paper. What I wish to point out is that the attractiveness of a rational plan of morality may very well provide that binding force for many people, moral realists included. Rationality as a basis for ethics is not a dead concept.
Now if someone wants to try and glean some kind of motive internalism out of Kant’s ethics, I am not entirely sure it can be done. But certainly a kind of reason internalism is evident, given a common rationality among people that Kant seemed to hold.
Foot, Philippa. "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives." 1972. From 20th Century Ethical Theory, eds. Cahn & Haber.
- 1995. Page 450.
- Page 451
- Page 452
- Kant makes sure to stay away from morality in the interests of personal gain, for to act morally for one’s own benefit is to act out of a kind of greed, which is not moral indeed.
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