1.

Critically discuss Kant’s view in the Groundwork that in order to have moral
worth, an action must be done from duty

1290 words

In the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant takes up a deontological position by asserting that
moral value is wholly contingent on whether an action is done out of duty - even if the outcome of doing
so has normatively negative moral consequences. Kant explains that our ‘duty’ is adherence to the
‘Categorical Imperative’, an absolute and unconditional moral axiom which Kant expresses through 3
formulations. Kant’s duty-based ethics does not take into account the consequences of an action in
deciding its moral worth, this puts it in stark contrast to consequentialist ethics. This essay will discuss the
arguments Kant gives for duty-based ethics, as well as its advantages and short-comings.

For Kant, Reason is our highest faculty in the sense that it is the only faculty which can critically assess
and co-ordinate all our faculties, including reason itself. (Wood, 2007, p. 16) Because Reason is our pre-
eminent faculty, Kant believes it must be the foundation of our moral edifice, since only it can allow us to
see beyond our animal nature, thereby permitting impartiality in our morality.

This is why for Kant, moral principles must be a priori, that is derived non-empirically from Reason: we
must act out of duty in accordance with the moral prescriptions of Reason - only in doing do so does
morality have an a priori source, only in doing so is morality justified. We cannot trust our “feelings,
inclinations, or passions to provide us with moral distinctions, judgments, and motives” since these are
empirically-based and do not come from a place of a priori Reason. Thus a person who is benevolent
simply because they are temperamentally inclined towards being so, is not morally virtuous, since such
benevolence is not performed out of duty for the moral law. (Russel, 2004, p. 644) On the other hand, the
person who does not feel a compassionate emotional impulse, but is nevertheless compassionate in their
actions, is morally virtuous.

Kant’s duty-based ethic disregards outcomes as being valid factors in evaluating the morality of an action.
This poses an advantage over outcome-based ethics like utilitarianism or consequentialism, in the sense
that the later suffer from the fact that consequences are largely dependent on chance, meaning that the
moral worth of an action can also be contingent on chance.

Suppose two people, after a night of heavy drinking, drive their cars home from the bar. One hits and kills
a straying pedestrian who, if the drivers reflexes were not inhibited, could have been dodged. The other
does not pass any pedestrians and thereby makes it home without causing harm. A purist
consequentialism would say that only the former individual is morally in the wrong, since only he brought
about a negative consequence. This position however, is clearly irrational, since the other driver could just
as easily have killed a pedestrian if a pedestrian did happen to wonder onto the road. In other words, it is
because of the latter drivers’ luck that she has not committed an immoral deed.

Kant’s deontological ethic on the other hand would deem both drivers responsible of an immoral deed
(assuming the categorical imperative would deem drink-driving immoral), since the immoral deed is not
the consequence of killing a person, but the disobeying of ones moral duty by deciding to drink-drive. In
this sense, Kant’s view that moral worth only comes from acting out of duty, is preferable, since it deals
with the problem of chance, which outcome-based ethics do not.

The cost of this advantage however is an inherent absolutism which makes duty-based ethics prone to
neglecting nuances in moral dilemmas. Kant’s ethic is absolutist for the simple fact that it is predicated on
a categorical imperative: no matter the particular circumstances of a moral dilemma, we must always,
since it is our moral duty, abide by the categorical imperative (Wood, 2007, p. 67)– this can lead to
problematic extremes.
Take the classic example of someone who is asked by a would-be murderer at their front door, whether
their would-be victim is hiding in their house. Kant in his essay On a Supposed Right to Lie from
Philanthropy tells us the right thing to do is not lie and admit their presence, that to lie in any
circumstance is always morally wrong. (Varden, 2010, p. 403) How can something that is so intuitively
immoral be perfectly moral by Kant’s standards? Kant would probably say that intuitions are not reliable,
that we should listen to Reason; yet Reason itself would reveal we are playing a causal role in murder by
not lying to the murderer. Kant does not concede this in his essay, instead making the counter-claim that
“if you have by a lie  prevented someone from committing the deed, then you are legally accountable for
all the consequences that might arise from it… if you had lied and said that he is not at home, and he has
actually gone out (though you are not aware of it), so that the murderer encounters him while going away
and perpetrates his deed on him, then you can by right be prosecuted as the author of his death.”
(Varden, 2010, p. 404) While this counter-argument is perfectly valid, it does not address why telling the
truth to the murderer is not morally incriminating, since it is undeniable that telling the truth to the
murderer plays a causal role in the victims death.

Kant is aware that his moral absolutism can be challenged with reduction ad absurdum arguments, but he
does not believe these extremes are - even if they may seem to be - immoral, since the categorical
imperative is based on Reason, which is in his view infallible and therefore produces an infallible moral
imperative.

Is such faith in Reason justified, or is it just another assumption in Kant’s system? It seems that any
attempts to justify why we ought to listen to Reason, must necessarily invoke Reason; this makes any
rational justifications (which are the only kind of justifications Kant is interested in) of Reason self-
defeating. Though Kant would rather not admit it, it is not that he has reason to believe in Reason (and its
super-ordinance as a faculty), but that he has faith in it. At the very least, this makes the supremacy of
Reason – which is an essential premise in Kant’s duty-based ethic – uncertain.

Nietzsche for one made compelling arguments against Reason, vehemently rejecting Kant’s belief that it
was a ‘pure’, impartial faculty. Instead Nietzsche contended that Reason was ‘just another drive’ in the
‘total economy of drives’, that it did not stand in contrast to ‘instinct’ but is instead just a highly articulate,
highly dominant instinct. (Nietzsche, 1886)

Such criticisms of Reason bring uncertainty to Kant’s axiomatic valuation of Reason; and if Reason as
conceived by Kant, is not certain, why should we be confident that morality proper consists in dutifully
abiding by its rationally prescribed imperatives? If Reason is not the arbiter of moral truth, whether or not
we dutifully abide by it, has no bearing on the morality of an action.

Overall it seems that, if we assume the primacy and infallibility of Reason, there is good reason to
subscribe to Kant’s duty-based view. If the moral law laid out by Reason is infallible, then it stands to
reason that morality consists in the dutiful adherence to these a priori principles. However, the assumed
supremacy of Reason, does not in my view, seem all that reasonable, nor self-evident. Even without the
philosophical critiques of Nietzsche and the like, cognitive science has demonstrated pervasive biases
and inherent errors in our supposedly ‘impartial’ faculties of reason. Perhaps then, it is our moral duty to
investigate whether Reason itself is really as ‘pure’ as Kant makes it out to be.

Bibliography
Korsgaard, C. (2013). Kantian Ethics, Animals and the Law. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 631.
Misselbrook, D. (2013). Duty, Kant and Deontology. British Journal of General Practice, 211.
Nietzsche, F. (1886). Beyond Good and Evil. London: Penguin.
Ricard, M. (2014). A Plea for the Animals. Colorado: Shambhala Publications.
Russel, B. (2004). History of Western Philosophy. London: Routledge.
Varden, H. (2010). Kant and Lying to the Murderer at the Door. Journal of Social Philosophy, 403-421.
Wood, A. (2007). Kantian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.