UNIVERSITY OF SAN AGUSTIN

Gen. Luna St. Iloilo City

College of Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Education
Philosophy Department

Course: Ethics

Course code: GE 8
Course description: Designed for students of ethics under the new CHED General Education. Thus the course
deals with both the substance as well as the pedagogy of ethics. The former concerns the principles of ethical
behavior in modern society at the level of the person, society, and interaction with the environment and other
shared resources (CMO 20 s2013), while the latter pertains to the various methods of teaching the course, as
well as the skills necessary to accomplish it, in a way that incorporates the most recent principles of and insights
into learning in the college level.

General Objectives:

During and at the end of the course, a student would be able to:

1. Recognize the basic moral theories and their proponents.;

2. Discuss and analyze the arguments that support the moral principles and their application to moral issues;

3. Make a stand on moral issues, strengthen, and deepen the sense of responsibility towards fellow human
beings as a transformative community builder oriented towards God;

4. Demonstrate an appreciation for various moral concepts and find the possible application in their lives as
Filipinos.

Course outline:

1. Morality, Ethics and Moral Philosophy

2. Morality as Compared to Other Normative

3. Traits of Moral Principles

4. Difference Between Moral and Non Moral Standards

5. Moral Dilemmas, Three Levels of Moral Dilemma,

6. Freedom as Foundation for Moral Acts, Culture and Moral Behavior

7. Domains of Ethical Assessment

8. The Purpose of Morality

9. Relativism in Ethics

10. Cultural Relativism and Filipino Moral identity.

11. Universal Values,

12. Stages of Moral Development Reason and Impartiality

13. Feelings and Reason

14. Aquinas’s Natural Law Theory and the Value of Natural Law Theory

15. Utilitarianism

16. Bentham and Mill’s Utilitarianism

17. The Strength and Weakness of Utilitarianism

18. External Criticisms of Utilitarianism

19. Deontology: The Ethics of Duty

20. Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative

21. Kant and rights

22. W.D. Ross: Duties are Prima Facie

23. John Rawls and Justice as Fairness

24. Virtue-Based Ethical System

25. Aristotle’s Theory

26. The Strengths and Limitations of Virtue Ethics

27. Globalization and its Ethical Challenges

28. Millennials and Filinnials : Ethical Challenges and Responses

Requirements of the Course:

1. Readings
2. Accomplishment of worksheets
3. Passing of Examination
 Module 6/Week 6

Deontology: The Ethics of Duty, Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative

Prepared by: Prof. John Christian Cabales

Time allotment: 3 hours

Overview:

This module comprises one (1) lesson. It is expected that you will:

1. define and discuss the Kantian and deontological system;

2. discuss Kantian categorical imperatives and Ross’ Prima Facie Duties;

3. use ethical frameworks or principles to analyze moral experiences;

4. make sound ethical judgments bases on principles, facts, and the stakeholders.

Lesson 1: Deals with Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Lesson 1
The Categorical Imperative of Kant
Objectives:
This lesson will help you –

1. define and discuss the Kantian and deontological system;

2. discuss Kantian categorical imperatives and Ross’ Prima Facie Duties;

3. use ethical frameworks or principles to analyze moral experiences;

4. make sound ethical judgments bases on principles, facts, and the stakeholders.

Introduction

The new science developed by Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Descartes and others viewed the universe as one
big machine governed by precise physical laws that can be discovered by observation and experiment. Freedom
and responsibility disappear from this picture of the world – and with them morality. Such a world has no
meaning, no purpose, no intrinsic value; it simply is.
Content

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

What I ought to do?

To seek out and establish the supreme principle of morality” and so to be in a position to justify and defend, not
every individual moral judgment, but the principles in accordance with which such judgments can be truly
made.

To develop a “proof by reason” (a priori) that will work for moral laws. He wants to prove the basic moral laws
not by experience or observation but by reason a priori, i.e., by pure reason alone. Pure reason gives us results
that are absolutely true and cannot be doubted. It is true for everyone, every-where, and all the time. And this
sort of absolute truth, Kant thinks, is very desirable indeed.

The Good Will

To clarify Kant's assertion about the good will, we ought to pay attention to "without qualification”:
(i) A good will alone can be good in itself, or can be an absolute or unconditioned good. That is – it is a
good will alone which is good in whatever context it may be found.
(ii) Its goodness is not conditioned by its relation to a context or to an end or to a desire. It is good on the
basis of itself and nothing else.

Therefore, the only possible basis of a pure ethics is the good will because it is always good, or is good in every
circumstance and situation. And so it is the good will that Kant will use as the basis of his ethical theory.

What makes a person have a good will?

When we act, we always act to accomplish something; every action has some goal or other. But we do not
consider people to be morally wanting when, despite their best efforts, they fail to achieve their goal. Instead –
“morally good [will] is . . . intrinsically good, that is, good in itself, just for what it is and not good merely
insofar as it is effective in achieving something further.

Against Utilitarianism: An act is not right or wrong because people are happy or not. If the will acted from
moral duty, then it acted rightly, even if its action makes me, or other people, very unhappy. We must do our
moral duty even if the whole world perishes.
The Function of Reason

Reason, which recognizes as its highest practical function the establishment of a good will, in attaining this end
is capable only of its own peculiar kind of contentment--contentment in fulfilling a purpose which in turn is
deter-mined by reason alone, even if this fulfillment should often involve interference with the purposes of
inclination.

What makes the good will good is the performance of duty

Kant wants to distinguish two different ways of acting. The first we might call “outward agreement with duty.”
Here the action does do what duty requires. But the motive behind the action was not duty itself, but some
other inclinations. The second way of acting is acting from duty. Here the action not only does what duty
requires, but the motive behind the action is duty as well. And what Kant wants to argue, here, is that it is only
this second way of acting – only acting from duty – that has true moral worth.

The formal principle of duty

Our second proposition is this: An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained
by it, but in the maxim in accordance with which it is decided upon; it depends therefore, not on the realization
of the object of the action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which, irrespective of all
objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been performed.

"Maxim": When you are contemplating doing a particular action, you are to ask what rule you would be
following if you were to do that action. This will be the maxim of the act. The maxim is thus the subjective
principle in the categorical imperative. This is the rule of action a person follows as part of his own policy of
living.

The Categorical Imperative

That is to say, I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a
universal law (Kant). Kant is not exactly saying “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Rather, he is saying something like, “Do unto others as you would have everyone do unto everyone.” For it is
this “everyone unto everyone” that would result from making my maxim into a universal law.

What is an imperative?

The conception of an objective principle so far as this principle is necessitating for a will is called a command
(of reason), and the formula of this command is called an imperative.

Kinds of Imperative

Hypothetical Imperatives: (problematic) just because the means commanded by the end we want to attain are
conditioned or demanded by the same end. The demand loses its sense if and when we choose no longer to
pursue the end we desire.

Imperatives of Morality

There is an imperative which, without being based on, and conditioned by, any further purpose to be attained by
a certain line of conduct, enjoins this conduct immediately. This imperative is categorical. It is concerned, not
 with the matter of the action and its presumed results, but with its form and with the principle from which it
follows; and what is essentially good in the action consists in the mental disposition, let the consequences be
what they may. This imperative may be called the imperative of morality.

How are imperatives possible?

In this task we wish first to enquire whether perhaps the mere concept of a categorical imperative may not also
provide us with the formula containing the only proposition that can be categorical imperative. When I conceive
a hypothetical imperative in general, I do not know beforehand what it will contain--until its condition is given.
But if I conceive a categorical imperative, I know at once what it contains. For since besides the law this
imperative contains only the necessity that our maxim should conform to this law, while the law, as we have
seen, contains no condition to limit it, there remains nothing over to which the maxim has to conform except the
universality of a law as such; and it is this conformity alone that the imperative properly asserts to be necessary.

Formulation of the Categorical Imperative

1. First formulation of the categorical imperative:

the Formula of the universal law:

Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that is should become a universal law.

Two functions of the Categorical Imperative:

First function: The first function of the categorical imperative is to “obligate us to obey it.”
Second function: The categorical imperative also functions as the test of the moral quality of possible maxims.

2. 2nd Formulation of the Categorical Imperative: The formula of humanity as an end in itself. [428-429]
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other,
never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

3) 3rd formulation: Law of Autonomy:

Act always on that maxim of such a will in us as can at the same time look upon itself as making universal law.

This formulation focuses on the fact that it is every individual who legislates. Recall: In the first formulation,
the rational human being, decrees that his maxim become a universal law. In the second formulation, the
rational human being is an end in himself because he is rational, and to be treated as one is itself a demand of
his rationality. In both formulations, we cannot but notice that as rational will the human being himself
legislates the universal law. Hence – the third formulation: the law of autonomy: In contrast to the first
formulation, here law is legislated for everyone; in the law of autonomy, law is legislated by everyone. In
obeying the moral law an individual obeys a law which he recognizes. Morality, therefore, only demands what
the human being ought to demand to himself/herself and of others as rational will.

Limits of Categorical Imperative

As a principle governing the universality and hence absoluteness of moral rules, it does not seem to be
plausible. It says, after all, that moral rules (imperatives of duty), without exception, hold in all circumstances.
The Categorical Imperative is untenable, implausible in the light of conflict cases. This is true especially with
regard to choice between two goods!

Negative Duties: Specify what is morally forbidden and require us to limit our pursuit of happiness by the
demand of morality. Negative duties are also called narrow, strict, rigorous, and perfect, for any action
violating them is morally wrong, such as we may never violate the respect owed another person, regardless of
the reasons we may have for wanting to do so.

Morality is based on reason, and reason cannot impose practical contradictions. . . . Therefore, Kant argued that,
even when there is a conflict between moral rules, at any given moment we can have only one duty. A genuine
conflict between duties, a conflict such that we have a duty to try to act at the same time on incompatible rules,
cannot arise. ‘Two conflicting rules cannot both be necessary at the same time,’ he wrote; ‘if it is our duty to act
according to one of these rules, then to act according to the opposite one is not our duty and is even contrary to
our duty.’ Therefore, he continued, it is not correct to say either that our duties can admit of exceptions or that
one duty can be more pressing or more obligatory than another; all moral obligations are absolute. (Sullivan,
100).

We have seen how Kant likened the laws of the moral world to the laws of the natural world: they both hold
universally and without exception. When a bird takes wing, its flight is not an exception to the law of gravity;
that law still holds. The bird’s flight is possible because other natural laws override the law of gravity by giving
“lift” to the bird’s wings. Similarly, in the case of conflicting rules, following the one with the stronger ground
does not constitute following an exception to the other, which still obligates us but is overridden on this
occasion. (Sullivan, 101)

So how does one resolve such conflicts? The stronger ground of obligation should prevail. “Since it is a
requirement of reason that we not be simultaneously bound by two conflicting duties, then, in Kant’s theory,
once we conscientiously decide where out duty lies, the other rule is regarded as not actually obligating us here
and now” (Sullivan, 104).

Hope

Hence, the world we live in is a dual world, a world wherein the morally innocent are often victims of the play
of brute physical forces and wherein the just do not necessarily get what is due them materially. In spite of all
that, granting that I live and act by the moral law as commanded by the categorical imperative in this empirical
world governed by physical laws and determinisms, is there hope for some ultimate unity that would make
sense of this broken, dual world? (Ramon Reyes)

What I may hope for?

The question seems to come down to the question of how and what are the conditions under which the whole
empirical world might accord itself with the ends and ideals of the moral world. The principle of the solution to
the problem lies in the moral imperative itself, for it alone provides us in all of human experience with
something that is absolutely necessary, though only in a moral sense.

The same moral law that commands us categorically to act dutifully also identifies the ultimate kingdom of ends
as the consequence of dutiful actions. The existence of that kingdom is required by moral reason. It would be
self-contradictory for our reason to command us to strive toward what is not possible; were it to do so, all the
moral commands of reason would be thrown into doubt. We therefore must believe that kingdom will come to
pass. But - the demands of justice are often not served in this world; acting conscientiously does not guarantee
that we will be happy. Moreover, even if we ourselves obey the moral law, we cannot count on everyone else
doing so.

Kingdom of Ends
Kant challenges us to ask what sort of moral world we should aim to create and also commands us to strive to
realize it. That world should be a community of persons all acting autonomously, all holding one another in
mutual respect. These are necessary implications demanded by our absolute, categorical moral imperative.
Unless I necessarily hope in personal immortality and the existence of a Supreme Being, I will never make any
sense of my experience. And unless there is freedom, our experience of the categorical imperative remains
without ground and source – since experience makes it appear that everything is "mechanistically" determined.

We must not only hope. We must also act as if through our actions we are bringing about a kingdom of ends.
Through this action we can bring about the unity of our dual, broken world.

What then can I know? Within the limitations of man’s finite knowledge, I can know the phenomenal world.
What ought I to do? I ought to obey the absolute commands of the categorical imperative in view of the implied
noumenal community of human person, the kingdom of ends. What may I hope for? With faith in man’s
capacity and freedom to act in the empirical world and history as demanded by morality, with faith in the
existence of God, with faith in personal immortality and a future life, I may hope for a future world of perpetual
peace and happiness. . . .(Kant)

Larry Javier looked at the complicated income tax form for sole proprietors. How he wished that he was back
to preparing the individual income tax return, which he used to file as an employee with fixed income. With the
gross income tax and his employers’ religious with-holding of correct taxes from his salary, the filing of his
income tax was then straight-forward. Now Larry was sole proprietor of the business he inherited from his
father. Mr. Victorio Javier founded a medium-sized handcrafted jewelry shop in the town of Meycauayan.
Through some forty years of hard work and honest dealing with his customers, Mang Victorio had built up the
business which now employed 20 craftsmen, many of them with decades of service. Mang Victorio was known
as a very charitable man, and was one of the first persons the mayor, the barangay chairman and parish priest
would run to whenever there was a project to be funded.

Mang Victorio’s sudden death forced Larry to take on this job, and keep the business alive to support the family
and maintain employment. The young Javier had some training as a craftsman mostly from watching and
assisting his father, but his work experience had largely been in sales with multinationals.
Larry, as sole proprietor, applied what he had learned in his previous employment, watching costs carefully,
instituting modern quality measures and keeping books meticulously. He was now going over his new books.
The more he looked at the tax form and his financial papers, the more he realized that he could not afford to pay
income taxes. He was winning more customers, sales were up, but the highly competitive industry was keeping
margins down.
He saw that one of the big drains on his operating income was the donations that he continued to give to his
town and barrio. He was afraid that he will have to start turning down many requests for donations, thereby
displeasing some of the old friends of his father. Fearful of compromising his family’s image, he consulted his
father’s friend, Mr. Joey Guevara.
Mr. Guevara confided, “Larry, you’re taking the government too seriously. The secret of the trade is to
understate your tax returns. You should be more like your father and all the others. He knew how to deal with
the collectors.”
Larry recalled the time when the Bureau of Internal Revenue raided their town three years ago. The victims
were mostly the small sweatshops whose books and business papers, if present, were not as neatly organized.
The BIR raid led to the closing of a number of these shops, with their tools and equipment confiscated until they
settled their deficiencies.
Then it dawned on Larry. His father paid “taxes” not really to the BIR but instead to the local officials in the
form of donations. He tried to recall what these donations went into. Indeed they went into worthwhile projects
that really did the community good, like parks, basketball courts, and scholarships.
Larry, like many others in the community, did not exactly admire the national government. In fact, he had
always perceived it as unresponsive to the needs of his community which was suffering from lack of potable
water supply and terrible traffic. He remembered reading somewhere that only 65% of taxes really went to
legitimate ends.
“Exactly who is cheating whom?” Larry pondered, realizing that he could not pay both the legitimate tax to BIR
and the “tax” to the community without going out of business.

Evaluation

1. What are the three (3) formulations of Categorical Imperatives?

2. Describe the moral experiences of Victorio Javier, Larry, and Joey Guevara in the story. If you have a
position in the government what must be the right maxim that you must follow (consider as well the other
two formulas) to perform your duties and responsibilities?

Limit your answer to the spaces provided.

3. Do you think before you act or perform your duties and obligations? Recall a situation in life in which
you have applied a maxim such as, a principle (Honesty is the best policy), etc. How did you treat
yourself/others as an end and not as a means to an end in the performance of the action? Tell us why the
maxim that you applied in guiding you to perform the act can be a universal law.

Write your answer in the spaces provided below.

Enrichment activities

1. For further reading, read Introductory text to Philosophy.Makati: Best Books, Inc., 1987. Adrales, Venancio
B. Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1981 Avey, Alber E. Handbook in
History of Philosophy. New York: Barns and Noble, Inc., 1968 Black, Max. Critical Thinking. 2nd ed. New
York: Prentice-Hall, 1955 Beck, Lewis W. Eighteenth Century Philosophy. New York:The Free Press, 1966.

2. Fieser, James. Moral Philosophy Through the Ages. USA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2001.

3. Ruggiero, Vincent Ryan. Thinking Critically About Ethical Issues, 6th ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill
Companies, 2004. ANGELES, ANTONETTE AND ROWENA AZADA. “Medicine Prices, Control and the
Pharmaceutical Industry.”

4. KANT, IMMANUEL. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, with On a Supposed Right to Lie Because o
fPhilanthropic Concerns. Third edition. Translated by James W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Co., 1993.

5. KANT, IMMANUEL. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, with On a Supposed Right to Lie Because
of Philanthropic Concerns. Third edition. Translated by James W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Co., 1993.

6. Fieser, James. Moral Philosophy Through the Ages. USA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2001.

7. Birsch, Douglas. Introduction to Ethical Theories: A Procedural Approach. USA: Waveland Press, Inc.,
2014.

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