Englishmen; even the long dominant system of Wolff (d. 1754)
was hardly known. Nor had Kant any serious influence in
England until the second quarter of the 19th century. We find,
however, distinct traces of Kantian influence in Whewell and
other writers of the intuitional school, and at a later date it
became so strong that its importance on subsequent ethical
thought can scarcely be over-estimated.
The English moralist with whom Kant has most affinity is Price; in fact, Kantism, in the ethical thought of modern Europe, holds a place somewhat analogous to that formerly occupied by the teaching of Price and Reid among English moralists. Kant, like Price and Reid, holds that Kant. man as a rational being is unconditionally bound to conform to a certain rule of right, or “categorical imperative” of reason. Like Price he holds that an action is not good unless done from a good motive, and that this motive must be essentially different from natural inclination of any kind; duty, to be duty, must be done for duty’s sake; and he argues, with more subtlety than Price or Reid, that though a virtuous act is no doubt pleasant to the virtuous agent, and any violation of duty painful, this moral pleasure (or pain) cannot strictly be the motive to the act, because it follows instead of preceding the recognition of our obligation to do it.[1] With Price, again, he holds that rightness of intention and motive is not only an indispensable condition or element of the rightness of an action, but actually the sole determinant of its moral worth; but with more philosophical consistency he draws the inference—of which the English moralist does not seem to have dreamt—that there can be no separate rational principles for determining the “material” rightness of conduct, as distinct from its “formal” rightness; and therefore that all rules of duty, so far as universally binding, must admit of being exhibited as applications of the one general principle that duty ought to be done for duty’s sake. This Categorical imperative. deduction is the most original part of Kant’s doctrine. The dictates of reason, he points out, must necessarily be addressed to all rational beings as such; hence, my intention cannot be right unless I am prepared to will the principle on which I act to be a universal law. He considers that this fundamental rule or imperative “act on a maxim which thou canst will to be law universal” supplies a sufficient criterion for determining particular duties in all cases. The rule excludes wrong conduct with two degrees of stringency. Some offences, such as making promises with the intention of breaking them, we cannot even conceive universalized; as soon as every one broke promises no one would care to have promises made to him. Other maxims, such as that of leaving persons in distress to shift for themselves, we can easily conceive to be universal laws, but we cannot without contradiction will them to be such; for when we are ourselves in distress we cannot help desiring that others should help us.
Another important peculiarity of Kant’s doctrine is his development of the connexion between duty and free-will. He holds that it is through our moral consciousness that we know that we are free; in the cognition that I ought to do what is right because it is right and not because I like it, it is implied that this purely rational volition is possible; that my action can be determined, not “mechanically,” through the necessary operation of the natural stimuli of pleasurable and painful feelings, but in accordance with the laws of my true, reasonable self. The realization of reason, or of human wills so far as rational, thus presents itself as the absolute end of duty; and we get, as a new form of the fundamental practical rule, “act so as to treat humanity, in thyself or any other, as an end always, and never as a means only.” We may observe, too, that the notion of freedom connects ethics with jurisprudence in a simple and striking manner. The fundamental aim of jurisprudence is to realize external freedom by removing the hindrances imposed on each one’s free action through the interferences of other wills. Ethics shows how to realize internal freedom by resolutely pursuing rational ends in opposition to those of natural inclination. If we ask what precisely are the ends of reason, Kant’s proposition that “all rational beings as such are ends in themselves for every rational being” hardly gives a clear answer. It might be interpreted to mean that the result to be practically sought is simply the development of the rationality of all rational beings—such as men—whom we find to be as yet imperfectly rational. But this is not Kant’s view. He holds, indeed, that each man should aim at making himself the most perfect possible instrument of reason; but he expressly denies that the perfection of others can be similarly prescribed as an end to each. It is, he says, “a contradiction to regard myself as in duty bound to promote the perfection of another, . . . a contradiction to make it a duty for me to do something for another which no other but himself can do.” In what practical sense, then, am I to make other rational beings my ends? Kant’s answer is that what each is to aim at in the case of others is not Perfection, but Happiness, i.e. to help them to attain those purely subjective ends that are determined for each not by reason, but by natural inclination. He explains also that to seek one’s own happiness cannot be prescribed as a duty, because it is an end to which every man is inevitably impelled by natural inclination: but that just because each inevitably desires his own happiness, and therefore desires that others should assist him in time of need, he is bound to make the happiness of others his ethical end, since he cannot morally demand aid from others, without accepting the obligation of aiding them in like case. The exclusion of private happiness from the ends at which it is a duty to aim contrasts strikingly with the view of Butler and Reid, that man, as a rational being, is under a “manifest obligation” to seek his own interest. The difference, however, is not really so great as it seems; since in another part of his system Kant fully recognizes the reasonableness of the individual’s regard for his own happiness. Though duty, in his view, excludes regard for private happiness, the summum bonum is not duty alone, but happiness combined with moral worth; the demand for happiness as the reward of duty is so essentially reasonable that we must postulate a universal connexion between the two as the order of the universe; indeed, the practical necessity of this postulate is the only adequate rational ground that we have for believing in the existence of God.
Before the ethics of Kant had begun to be seriously studied in England, the rapid and remarkable development of metaphysical view and method of which the three chief stages are represented by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel respectively had already taken place; and the system of the Hegel. latter was occupying the most prominent position in the philosophical thought of Germany.[2] Hegel’s ethical doctrine (expounded chiefly in his Philosophie des Rechts, 1821) shows a close affinity, and also a striking contrast, to Kant’s. He holds,
- ↑ Singularly enough, the English writer who approaches most nearly to Kant on this point is the utilitarian Godwin, in his Political Justice. In Godwin’s view, reason is the proper motive to acts conducive to general happiness: reason shows me that the happiness of a number of other men is of more value than my own; and the perception of this truth affords me at least some inducement to prefer the former to the latter. And supposing it to be replied that the motive is really the moral uneasiness involved in choosing the selfish alternative, Godwin answers that this uneasiness, though a “constant step” in the process of volition, is a merely “accidental” step—“I feel pain in the neglect of an act of benevolence, because benevolence is judged by me to be conduct which it becomes me to adopt.”
- ↑ In Kantism, as we have partly seen, the most important ontological beliefs—in God, freedom and immortality of the soul—are based on necessities of ethical thought. In Fichte’s system the connexion of ethics and metaphysics is still more intimate; indeed, we may compare it in this respect to Platonism; as Plato blends the most fundamental notions of each of these studies in the one idea of good, so Fichte blends them in the one idea free-will. “Freedom,” in his view, is at once the foundation of all being and the end of all moral action. In the systems of Schelling and Hegel ethics falls again into a subordinate place; indeed, the ethical view of the former is rather suggested than completely developed. Neither Fichte nor Schelling has exercised more than the faintest and most indirect influence on ethical philosophy in England; it therefore seems best to leave the ethical doctrines of each to be explained in connexion with the rest of his system.
