Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Essay Questions

Kant insists that situations, incentives, outcomes, and emotions can't be the basis for moral judgments. Do you agree or disagree?

Agreeing with Kant, we might say that situations and emotions are hardly the basis for moral judgments, precisely because they are situational and emotional. They will never yield judgments that we expect others to agree with universally, and Kant argues persuasively that this universality is what separates moral judgments from statements of pleasure. If we don't expect all rational beings to agree, what we are really saying is, "I did what made me feel good," which is hardly the basis for a morality. On the other hand, Kant's abstract mode of arguing leads him to admit that it is entirely possible that nobody in the history of the world has ever acted morally. Kant believes that this does not necessarily disqualify his argument—indeed, just because no one acts morally does not change the fact that they ought to. But what use is a morality that for all intents and purposes cannot be practiced?

Explain the role of the will in moral judgment as Kant understands it. How does Kant define the will, and what methodological problems does it create for him?

Broadly, Kant understands the will as an active faculty of the mind that causes and changes facts and situations in the perceivable world. The will is rational, because that is what distinguishes it from instinct. Because it is rational, it acts according to universal principles and laws; for this reason, it is the basis of moral action. Practically, the will functions by matching means to ends, and so it is by using the will that we can decide to treat other human beings as ends in themselves. The problem, however, is that since the will belongs to the world of the intellect, Kant cannot explain how it can affect things in the world of appearances without being subject to causation, as everything in the world of appearances is. If it is subject to causation, then it is no longer free, and therefore no longer moral.

Despite the perceived iciness of the categorical imperative, happiness seems to play an important role in Kant's argument. Examine the role of happiness in the Groundwork. How does it fit into Kant's argument?

Like Aristotle, Kant makes a distinction between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure often has a corrupting influence, and is purely affective, only a question of how we feel, whereas happiness pleases both our rational and our sensual sides. To be happy means not only to feel pleasure, but to feel worthy of feeling pleasure—to feel "good" in the strong sense. Kant believes, somewhat counterintuitively, that human beings have a duty to be happy, and that this might, in fact, be the basis for moral action, to avoid the sense of doing something beneath our dignity that we would then look on with shame. Often, things that make us happy might, in fact, be unpleasant—for example, the sense of having done our duty, and thereby preserved our dignity as human beings, despite our inclination, for example.

There are multiple iterations of the categorical imperative throughout The Groundwork. Explain them, and explain how they are linked.

The first imperative is to act in accordance with the law because it is the law. That is the only way to assure the universality and therefore the morality of one's action. In the second section, Kant modifies this to say, act in such a way that your act of willing could be the basis for a universal law. He uses this formulation in order to imagine an act of will—which he defines as the matching of means to ends—in which both the means and the ends could be conceived as universally necessary. The introduction of the concept of means and ends leads Kant to point out that morality must serve something that is an end in itself, since in becoming a means it would be subject to the heteronomy of incentives. This leads him to imagine something that serves as an end in itself, i.e., man. The categorical imperative is now to treat others as though they are ends in themselves. Finally, Kant imagines a community of such people, all of whom would recognize themselves as law-givers and subjects to the law. He modifies the imperative one final time: treat others as though you and they belonged to a kingdom of ends.

In the Third Section, why can't Kant successfully show that we must act morally?

The problem is that we live in two worlds: the world of the intellect and the world of appearances. Everything in the world of appearances has a cause. This is because causality is a form of human perception, so everything that we perceive we arrange according to cause and effect. The perceivable world is an infinite causal chain of one phenomenon causing another. In the Prolegomena, Kant argued that this is why the sciences were possible. By contrast, everything in the world of the intellect is self-causing, and therefore free. This is the place where moral judgments originate. The problem is that something from the world of the intellect can't intervene in the world of appearances without at the same time being subject to causation—and therefore no longer free, and no longer moral. Kant concludes that we must simply accept the incomprehensibility of moral experience.