Abstract: The “human-centeredness” represented by Kant has become the main target of contemporary environmental ethics, and whether nonhuman beings possess “intrinsic value” has become the focal point of controversy. Yet contemporary scholars’ interpretation of what exactly “intrinsic value” means is entirely different from Kant’s. Taking as its point of departure the “human-centeredness” widely criticized by environmental ethics, as well as basic ethical concepts such as “value” and “purpose,” this essay sorts through and comments on the features of Kantian ethics, and points out that environmental ethics’ criticisms of Kant are to a considerable extent based on misreading. This essay argues that the so-called human-centeredness in the Kantian sense is, in a certain meaning, something no ethics can avoid. Finally, the essay suggests that Kantian ethics is not in conflict and opposition with environmental ethics, but is rather a reflection on ethics itself at a different level; Kant’s ethics can likewise extend moral concern to nonhuman beings and has the possibility of further development.
Keywords: Kant human-centeredness moral metaphysics intrinsic value
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The legendary graduation thesis—I probably spent about a week thinking up the topic (including all sorts of wasteful and decadent activities), three days reading intensively (including five books by Kant), two days organizing notes, and then the last day (twelve consecutive hours) finishing the writing. Whether this thesis can reflect my academic level in my undergraduate years is hard to say, because I did not attach much importance to it; I simply treated it like an ordinary course paper, the kind one turns in within two weeks. Still, it at least most typically reflects my way of writing papers; the proportion of time allocation is simply too exemplary.
Kantian Ethics and “Human-Centeredness”
Abstract: The “human-centeredness” represented by Kant has become the main target of contemporary environmental ethics, and whether nonhuman beings possess “intrinsic value” has become the focal point of controversy. Yet contemporary scholars’ interpretation of what exactly “intrinsic value” means is entirely different from Kant’s. Taking as its point of departure the “human-centeredness” widely criticized by environmental ethics, as well as basic ethical concepts such as “value” and “purpose,” this essay sorts through and comments on the features of Kantian ethics, and points out that environmental ethics’ criticisms of Kant are to a considerable extent based on misreading. This essay argues that the so-called human-centeredness in the Kantian sense is, in a certain meaning, something no ethics can avoid. Finally, the essay suggests that Kantian ethics is not in conflict and opposition with environmental ethics, but is rather a reflection on ethics itself at a different level; Kant’s ethics can likewise extend moral concern to nonhuman beings and has the possibility of further development.
Keywords: Kant human-centeredness moral metaphysics intrinsic value
Origin
Confronted with an increasingly severe environmental crisis, environmental ethics has received wide attention in contemporary times and has almost become a prominent discipline.
There are many schools of environmental ethics, including so-called weakly anthropocentric environmental ethics, animal rights theory, biocentrism, deep ecology, ecofeminism, and so on; but they share the common feature of all directing their spearhead at traditional “human-centeredness” or “human chauvinism,” and of advocating the extension of ethics to beings beyond humanity (animals, life, or ecosystems).
In a certain sense, one may say that opposition to “human-centeredness,” or at least opposition to traditional human-centeredness, is precisely the hallmark of so-called “environmental ethics,” and even the necessary and sufficient condition for being an environmental ethic: the human-centered person will be unable to accept environmental ethics, whereas once one abandons human-centeredness and extends morality to the nonhuman, that means one has accepted some kind of environmental ethics.
Rolston says: “Those who are deeply trapped in the personalist ethics of human-centeredness, so popular in modern Western thought, will doubt this point—that is, that we ought to possess environmental ethics in this profound sense. In their view, human beings owe no obligations whatsoever to rocks, rivers, or ecosystems, nor any obligations to birds or bears. Human beings have serious obligations only to one another. Caring for nature is merely an instrument for fulfilling such duties. The environment is the wrong object of ethical concern. The environment is only an instrument, not an end in itself. Nothing in the environment has moral significance, and nature possesses no intrinsic value. This last point—that nature has no intrinsic value at all—is the one we are to examine step by step. Hence, in the discussion below, value is a key term. If we are studying interpersonal ethics, then terms such as rights, justice, kindness and cruelty, social contract, promises, interests and costs, utility, altruism and egoism, and so on will often be used. These terms also occupy a place in environmental ethics, but the basic term most helpful and most directive for us is indeed value. It is precisely from value that we derive duty.”[①]
Like Rolston, most environmental ethicists, when explaining “human-centeredness,” will bring in the concept of “intrinsic value.” For example, Bryan Baxter says: “The basic idea guiding the development direction of ecological moral theory is: (1) nonhuman material beings are granted moral concern; and—(2) this is partly because of its noninstrumental value—that is to say, the value of nonhuman beings does not depend on whether they contribute to human interests.”[②] And Peter S. Wenz goes even more succinctly in his glossary definition: “Anthropocentrism: centered on human beings. Anthropocentrists believe that only human beings themselves have value, and they take it for granted that animals, species, and ecosystems in particular must be sacrificed for the attainment of the greatest human happiness.”[③]
From the formulations of these writers, we can see that when they claim nonhuman beings possess “intrinsic value,” they mean that their value does not lie in whether they serve as tools for pursuing human “interests” or “happiness.”
When we speak of “intrinsic value,” we are compelled to mention Kant, because it was Kantian ethics that first clearly put forward the claim that “only human beings are ends, and all other nonrational beings can only be treated as means.” Environmental ethicists point out that traditional human-centeredness, that is, the human-centeredness of rational superiority, is, as everyone knows, “in modern times, Kant was an important representative of this view.”[④]
Since the repudiation and refutation of traditional “human-centeredness” is the core issue of environmental ethics, and Kant happens to be the foremost “representative” of this tradition, environmental ethicists certainly cannot treat Kantian ethics carelessly or perfunctorily; they must take it seriously and reflect on it in depth. Otherwise, the so-called opposition to human-centeredness will degenerate into a mere slogan, and “human-centeredness” will become a puppet one has fabricated out of thin air to vent one’s frustrations, instead of a genuinely serious object of reflection.
Yet, regrettably, many environmental ethicists have not taken Kantian ethics seriously; rather, they merely snip out certain fragments convenient for attack according to their own needs and ridicule them, without thinking of understanding them in their original context as a whole.
Modern people often, consciously or unconsciously, hold some kind of “Whiggish” view of history, namely the belief that human history is a history of linear progress. In discussing the history of ethics, people are also accustomed to evaluating it from the standpoint of linear progress; Nash’s interpretation of ethics as “gradual expansion”[⑤] is a typical example. I am not saying that the Whiggish view of history is wholly untenable; such a view of history certainly has its rationality. However, when what we face is a specific independent opponent rather than merely a rough sketch of the general trend of historical development, such a simplified strategy is undoubtedly perfunctory and evasive. First take human-centeredness as a whole intellectual tradition, pluck out all its worst propositions, then combine these propositions from different contexts into one doctrine and criticize it as the representative of the entirety of human-centeredness; such a trick is similar to the traditional Soviet textbook attack on “idealism,” and is basically nothing more than a kind of self-directed, self-pleasing performance.
What I will point out is this: many environmental ethicists’ accusations against Kant are based on simplification, misunderstanding, and distortion of Kantian ethics. Kant’s understanding of concepts such as “value” and “purpose,” as well as the basic line of thought and theoretical demands of ethics, differ from those of mainstream contemporary ethicists. By examining Kantian ethics, this essay precisely hopes to reveal the inescapability of “human-centeredness” in the Kantian sense and to offer a counter-critique of contemporary environmental ethics.
1. The “Purpose” of Ethics
Not only in environmental ethics, but in most contemporary ethical discussions, the word “value” has become the most central keyword. Yet the word “value” appears very rarely in Kantian ethics; as for earlier ethical traditions, this word had no status at all.
In Western languages, the word value comes from the Latin valere, meaning “worthy,” “strong,” and was first mainly used in economics. Its widespread introduction into ethics is at least a matter of the nineteenth century.[⑥] As for its replacing concepts such as “virtue,” “duty,” and “the good” to become the central concept of ethics, that was probably a development of the twentieth century.
Looking over the history of human thought, the transformation of core concepts in a given field is by no means merely a change in rhetorical preference; rather, it often implies a paradigm shift in the entire discussion, signifying a series of changes in the relevant discursive context, problem-awareness, and mode of thinking—if speaking of value were equivalent to speaking of the good or of purpose, then it would be hard to imagine how the word “value” could so quickly and so widely replace all other traditional keywords in ethics.
In fact, the prominence of the word “value” is related to a certain modern mode of thought common among people, namely something people call “modernity” or “instrumental rationality”; the rise of utilitarianism follows the same logic. I will not pursue this in depth here.
What I do want to pursue here is this: what exactly does “intrinsic value” mean in environmental ethics?
Yang Tongjin explains: “The term ‘inherent value’ (inherent value, also translated as natural value or intrinsic value) widely used in Western environmental ethics mostly refers to intrinsic value in this sense: namely, insofar as a being maintains itself as an end in itself, it possesses inherent value, and this value is something a being has from the day it exists. Regan and Taylor understand the inherent value of ‘subjects-of-a-life’ and ‘teleological centers of life’ in this way. Their purpose in using this concept is to break through the limitations of Western ethics (especially Kant), which treats only human beings as beings to be maintained as intrinsic value. The ‘purpose’ understood by Western environmental ethics is broader. Any natural being, so long as it possesses biological self-reproduction ability, an ecological tendency toward self-maintenance, or a cybernetic function of automatic equilibrium, is a being with its own purpose and with inherent value.”[⑦]
It is thus clear that to understand the concept of “intrinsic value,” one must first address the concept of “purpose.” And this concept is also used extensively in Kantian ethics.
Kant plainly states: “Everything that man wishes and over which he can exert control can be used merely as a means; only human beings, that is, every rational creature, are ends in themselves.”V 93[87][⑧]
From this passage alone, Kant is undoubtedly a thoroughgoing human-centered thinker, but we had better pay attention to Kant’s next sentence: “because by virtue of his own autonomy man is the subject of the morally law that is holy in itself.”V 93[87]
For Kant, the reason only human beings are “ends” is that only human beings can be “autonomous legislators,” and not for any other reason. Apart from the “good will,” human “understanding, wit, judgment, courage, resolve, steadfastness, happiness, power, wealth, honor, health, and complete well-being…” cannot be regarded as good without limitationIV 400[393]. It can be seen that Kant’s claim that “human beings are ends” is not, as some environmental ethicists accuse, a matter of placing human “happiness” or “interest” at the highest end, nor even a matter of human “reason” arrogating superiority to itself. The “end” Kant speaks of is moral in meaning, and it points to morality itself.
Before explaining Kant’s view in greater detail, let us temporarily leave Kant aside and talk about how the concept of “purpose” in the ethical sense itself ought to be understood.
“Purpose” is an everyday word and is easy to grasp intuitively. Precisely for that reason, however, when the word is used in argumentation it often appears ambiguous and unclear.
“Why go to the cafeteria?” “To eat.” — In this case, what is the “purpose” of the act of “going to the cafeteria”? It is not “food” as such, even less “the cafeteria” as such; rather, the whole sentence “(I am going) to eat” is the “purpose”!
In the act or sentence pattern “I—help—him,” we can say that “him” is the “target” or “purpose” of this act (action), just as “cafeteria” is the “purpose” in the pattern “I—go—to the cafeteria.” We can transform the original sentence into “I help him with ‘him’ as the ‘purpose’” or “I walk to the cafeteria with the cafeteria as the ‘purpose.’” But clearly, “cafeteria” as a “purpose” and “to eat” as a purpose are different meanings, or rather, questions at different levels.
The “purpose” in the former sense is not the “purpose” ethics asks about. Ethics asks questions about “human action”—ethics asks: “Why should I (may I / must I / must I not / had better…) help him?” That is to say, we are not asking “What do I take as the purpose in giving help?” but rather: “What is the purpose of ‘my using him (her/it) as an end in performing some action’?”
The examination of the rationality or legitimacy of an action should all ask after the second sense of “purpose,” rather than remaining merely at the first level of identifying the object. And the answer to the latter kind of purpose is still a whole sentence, or another action, or compliance with some rule. For example, we may say that the purpose of “going to the cafeteria” is “to eat”; the purpose of “paying him back” is “to fulfill a contract”; the purpose of “helping him” is “to express care”; the purpose of “(having to) eat” is “to obtain nutrition”; the purpose of “(should) help one’s companions” is “(should) fulfill duty,” and so on.
Contemporary ethics, with a certain utilitarian mindset, assumes that the sentence-pattern of a purpose must be something like “in order to produce XX (pleasure, happiness, interest, value…)”, and then proceeds to omit “produce/promote/obtain” and leave behind a bare thing. Such omission is not incorrect; in fact, in many cases the abbreviated wording is more natural. But contemporary ethics has turned omission into neglect, thereby creating a certain illusion: as if some empirical, perceptible entity or quantity (value, pleasure, etc.) had become the “purpose” itself in the second sense.
Nothing of this confusion occurs in Kant, which is why Kant can regard “duty” as a “purpose” instead of taking some actually perceptible “thing” as the purpose.
To give another example: a certain ethics claims, “One ought to choose such an action as can produce the maximum total value.” Here, what is the “purpose”? Here too there are two levels of distinction: first, the “purpose” of “such an action” is indeed “(to produce) the maximum total value”; but the purpose of “our choosing such an action” is the practice of the principle “one ought to choose….” In other words, if the answer to the question of what kind of action “we ought to choose” is precisely the principle of action established by ethics, then the reason we “choose” one action or another is that we must observe our “principle.” And ethics is not asking after the “purpose” of people’s actions in general—that is the business of psychology, folklore, sociology, or anthropology. The task of ethics should be to ask after the purpose of the most special kind of human action, namely action itself undertaken through conscious “choice.”
Whether ethics asks “What should one do?” or “What should one pursue?” or “What kind of person should one become?” and so forth, it is in fact asking—“What should one choose / how should one choose?” And the concept of “choice” means that the one who chooses is a free will, that is, a subject capable of making choices for itself. For asking why a being that lacks the capacity to choose is as it is belongs to natural science; natural science can explain the reason why some object moves and changes according to causality and natural laws, but it cannot explain it by moral law. What ethics needs and can possibly explain or regulate must be the chooser. Whether in traditional ethics or environmental ethics, demands can only be made of beings capable of choosing. Environmental ethics will ask human beings to care for animals, but it will not ask animals to care for human beings.
Of course, we can also say that animals, in a certain sense, likewise possess the capacity of “choice.” But they probably choose only out of instinct or intuition, rather than “from principle.” Ethical inquiry, however, is concerned with those moral principles that guide people in making choices. And if a certain choice does not appeal to the guidance of moral principles, then that choice is not a choice in the ethical sense.
The title of this section, “The ‘Purpose’ of Ethics,” has a double meaning. First, it serves to clarify the concept of “purpose” in the ethical sense; then, and more importantly, it asks what the purpose of ethics as a rational activity actually is.
As has already been distinguished above, “purpose” here likewise has two layers of meaning. The first is the object toward which ethical inquiry is directed, namely people’s “choices,” or, more precisely, the purpose for which people make choices, or the principles they employ in making choices. The discussion is about what sort of purpose or principle is reasonable.
The various objects of study that ethicists assign to ethics are nothing more than different ways of expressing the above. For example, Moore declared: “The characteristic of ethics is not to study various assertions about human conduct, but to study assertions about two properties of things, namely the property denoted by the term ‘good’ and the opposite property denoted by the term ‘bad’.”[⑨] But if people’s choice of turning toward the good or drifting toward evil is of no consequence, then the distinction between good and evil is meaningless as well.
The second meaning is this: what, after all, is the purpose of the inquiry into and discussion of ethics itself, i.e., ethics as a matter of principles of choice? What is the significance of ethics?
First of all, it can be affirmed that apart from thoroughgoing nihilism (and of course there can also be no nihilist ethics), no ethical doctrine from any age or school would deny the significance of ethics, for otherwise it would necessarily be self-contradictory. Yet on the other hand, people also rarely spell out the significance of ethics explicitly.
For instance, we say that the purpose of ethics is to promote human happiness, because the establishment of ethical norms can make social order healthier, and so on. Yet we may further ask: what is the purpose of “promoting human happiness”? That is still an ethical question.
To escape this endless regress, one needs somewhere to stand as the highest purpose that no longer needs to be questioned, or in other words, one must appeal to an “immanent purpose,” namely, that which takes itself as its purpose.
One option is to set a goal such as “promoting human happiness” as the endpoint; that is to say, this is unconditional good, and ethics no longer needs to inquire into its purpose. But another option is to regard ethics itself as unconditional, and this is precisely Kant’s strategy.
Before further explaining Kant’s strategy, we must first note that Kant’s ethics is developed mainly under the titles “The Metaphysics of Morals” and “The Critique of Practical Reason.” To understand the demands of Kant’s ethics, one must first not forget Kant’s understanding of the mission of “metaphysics” and “critical philosophy.”
First, Kant held that metaphysics is “a natural disposition of man,” that is, an autonomous and inescapable demand of humanity: “To act as though one were indifferent to such inquiries is futile; the subject matter of these inquiries cannot be indifferent to human nature. Those feigned indifferents, however much they may try to disguise themselves by changing the language of the schools into a popular tone, as soon as they think anything at all, inevitably come to those metaphysical claims they had pretended to despise so greatly.”IV 6[8][AX] “The idea that the human mind will one day completely abandon metaphysical inquiry is as undesirable as if, in order not always to inhale impure air, we preferred to stop breathing altogether. Therefore there will always be metaphysics in the world. Not only that, everyone, especially every thinking person, will have metaphysics. In the absence of a public standard, everyone will tailor metaphysics in his own way. Now, what has hitherto been called metaphysics does not satisfy anyone who examines it, yet it is impossible to abandon it entirely. Hence one must finally attempt a critique of pure reason itself; or, once a critique already exists, study and subject it to comprehensive examination, for there is no other way to satisfy this urgent need, which goes beyond mere curiosity for knowledge.”IV 373[367]
What is said above in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics undoubtedly also applies to our understanding of “moral metaphysics.” Every thinking person has the need to establish maxims for his own actions and to ask after the initial grounds of those maxims. Ethics is the product of people’s self-reflection, while the mission of critical philosophy is to restrain reason’s presumption, thereby avoiding both the dogmatic despotism of the rationalist and the “anarchism” of the skeptic, and finding a way out through legislation between the two.
Kant plainly says: critical philosophy “does not aim at the extension of knowledge itself, but merely at its correction.”III 41[43][B26] Kant points out that critical philosophy, just like the police in a legally ordered society, does not directly produce positive utility, but “to deny that such service of criticism has positive utility is as if one said that the police do not produce positive utility.”III 15[16][BXXXV]
Kant’s moral doctrine, too, is first and foremost a negative function of correcting reason. Therefore one must by no means regard Kant as a transmitter of moral truth; this is precisely what Kant opposed: “The critique of practical reason in general has the task of preventing empirical, and thus conditionally limited, reason from arrogating to itself the exclusive right to supply the determining grounds of the will.”V 16[16]
That is to say, what Kant’s ethics first seeks to constrain is less people’s conduct than reason itself. Ethical inquiry is not first of all for judging the conduct of others, but for reason’s self-restraint.
Kant points out that “it is impossible to give a sufficient and at the same time universal mark of truth.”III 74[79][B83] He emphasizes that the philosopher’s task is not to provide the masses with truth; the philosopher should learn “not to pretend, in matters concerning universal human affairs, to have insights higher and broader than those the great multitude, which is of equal concern to us, can attain just as easily.”III 19[19][BXXXII]
Kant even admits that in moral judgment, ordinary people are “almost more certain than the philosopher, since the philosopher after all has no principles different from common understanding, but may have a host of alien and irrelevant considerations that easily confuse his judgment and lead it away from the right path.”IV 412[405]
It can thus be seen that Kant’s ethics is by no means a condescending sermonizing from on high (many environmental ethicists are in fact just such a thing). The significance of ethics is not to let people “learn from it, but to bring recognition and permanence to their own norms.”IV 412[405] In other words, Kant’s ethics does not provide people with moral norms; rather, it helps them reflect upon, confirm, and consolidate their own norms.
But steadfastness in principle is not necessarily always a good thing. Kant remarks: “Among human beings, there are but few who act according to principles, and this is absolutely a good thing, because with respect to those principles human beings are easily mistaken; in such a case, the more universal the principle, the more steadfast the person who establishes principles for himself, the wider the harm that results. There are far more people who act from benevolent motives, and this is an excellent thing, although in individual cases it cannot yet be counted as a special achievement of the person.”II 228[227]
In short, Kant’s ethics is not, like some sort of “bottom-line ethics,” intended to regulate everyone’s behavior. When Kant gives examples of the application of his ethics, he always says “if I ask myself”V 47[44]. His ethics is more a matter for “myself,” that is, for those free seekers of knowledge who from the heart inquire into the maxims of their own actions, who inquire into the conditions under which they “deserve happiness.” Kant offers such inquirers a “touchstone” by which to test their own maxims.
Finally, it is worth adding: if free will and the capacity to choose for oneself are the prerequisites of ethics, then on what grounds can we say that human beings are free? And how can human reason be capable of guiding practice? In fact, this is precisely the work done by the Critique of Pure Reason: “to set limits to knowledge,” to exclude freedom from the bounds of human knowledge, so that the capacity for freedom becomes “something entirely absurd”V 51[47]. “If reason dares to explain how pure reason can be practical, it oversteps all its bounds; this is exactly the same as the task of explaining how freedom is possible.”IV 467[459]
Therefore, if someone wishes to deny human free will, or to deny ethics altogether (the interest of reason in practical matters), Kant will not be able to furnish a refutation, because freedom cannot be proved. All ethical discussion always presupposes the reality that “ethics can be discussed.”
II. Human Dignity
After the foregoing clarification, let us now interpret once more the meaning of “only man is an end in himself.”
Let us return to a question mentioned earlier: why can what serves as the highest purpose in ethical inquiry (the purpose of ethics itself) not be something outside ethics, such as “promoting human happiness,” but must instead be ethical inquiry itself, namely the “good will” — “A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness for attaining any proposed end, but is good only through volition, that is, it is good in itself.”IV 401 [394]
Kant says: “Although the principle of happiness can furnish maxims, it can never furnish those that are fit to serve as laws of the will, even if one takes universal happiness as one’s object. For, since knowledge of happiness is based on pure empirical data, and since every judgment concerning it depends to a very great degree on each person’s own experience, while this experience itself is also extremely variable, such a judgment may indeed yield general rules, but never universal rules, that is, it may yield rules that are very often applicable in ordinary cases, but not rules that must necessarily hold at all times.”V 40[36]
In simple terms, things such as “happiness,” which depend so heavily on each person’s own experience, cannot yield an absolute law, unless one dogmatically and wishfully monopolizes the definition of “happiness,” and dogmatism is precisely what Kant vehemently opposed.
When some people see the phrase “absolute law,” they immediately assume that Kant is trying to provide a dogmatic judgment. That stems from a misunderstanding of the basic line of critical philosophy, as I have already mentioned above. Kant’s “absolute” is by no means an absolute truth in the sense of rationalism and dogmatism; rather, it is precisely a negative limitation meant to put an end to such dogmatism.
In Kant’s view, things like happiness depend on individual experience; everyone has the right to determine his own happiness, and no one has the right to set a universal standard for happiness. Therefore, even if one says that “promoting the happiness of others” ought to be a moral duty, what others actually regard as happiness must still be “left to their own judgment.”VI 401[388] That is to say, “promoting the happiness of others” still has to presuppose respect for others’ freedom, and thus cannot become an absolute law.
Then, if I have no right to determine others’ happiness, what if I simply set my own happiness, or the satisfaction of some other (empirical) “need,” as the end?
In that case we will also find that the satisfaction of need and the demands of reason are not always in agreement. The demands of reason (including ethical inquiry) often not only fail to satisfy people’s “needs,” but have the opposite effect. Kant remarks: “Indeed I also find that the more an enlightened reason is intent on the enjoyment of life and happiness, the farther human beings move from true contentment. From this there arises in many people, and especially in those most eager to apply reason, if they are sufficiently candid to admit it, a certain misology, that is, a hatred of reason, because after calculating all the benefits they have derived from reason — not to mention the benefits derived from all the arts and inventions of daily luxury, but even from science — they nevertheless discover that they have in fact brought upon themselves more trouble than gain in happiness, and ultimately in this respect envy those more ordinary people who are closer to the guidance of mere natural instinct and do not allow reason too much influence over what they do, rather than despise them.”IV 402[395]
Indeed, if reason is taken as a means to happiness or to satisfying desires and needs, it is hardly up to the task. Compared with spending all day entangled in serious and difficult questions of existence, death, and the like, which bring pain, the state of life in which “the people daily use them and are unaware of them” may perhaps be more “happy.” Moreover, the abundance of reason often keeps increasing our needs rather than satisfying them — in an undeveloped primitive community lacking reason, one does not encounter problems like the “ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people.”
Thus, “since reason is not sufficiently apt to guide the will reliably with respect to the objects of the will and the satisfaction of all our needs — needs that reason sometimes even causes to increase — and since a natural instinct endowed with us by birth would guide us to this end much more precisely, nevertheless reason has been assigned to us as a practical faculty, that is, as a faculty that ought to influence the will. Therefore the true mission of reason must be to produce a will that is good not as a means to some other intention, but good in itself.”IV 403[396] — Here Kant employs a certain teleological argument, but whether one accepts teleology here is not decisive. We need only note that “how pure reason can be practical” cannot be demonstrated, yet all ethical discussion must presuppose that we wish reason to guide our actions. And any actual “need,” if it arises from human animal desire, is often something reason’s role is instead to suppress rather than satisfy; whereas if it arises from reason in the first place, reason’s role is first to bring that need into being from nothing, rather than to satisfy it. Therefore neither sort of “need” can easily become the purpose of reason. If one still wishes to say that the purpose of reason is some sort of “need,” then it can only be a need for reason itself — this is the so-called “good will” that takes itself as its own end.
“Some qualities even help this good will itself and can greatly ease its work, yet they still do not possess any intrinsic and unconditional worth, but always presuppose a good will as a condition.”IV 400[394] Kant’s “good will” is precisely the demand of practical reason itself. Kant uses “(intellectual) self-satisfaction” as “a negative contentment” in place of “happiness” as the motive of morality.
In Kant’s own words, “reason” is precisely “the faculty of principles”III 233[238][B356]. The natural endowment of human reason requires that maxims be set up in action, and moral metaphysics is to reflect upon and inquire into the maxims people have set up.
Moral maxims appear as “imperatives,” that is, as expressions in the form “ought to / must / must not …” Kant distinguishes between “hypothetical imperatives” and “categorical imperatives” (absolute imperatives). A hypothetical imperative involves some other end, such as some empirical object of need, or another command. For example: “In order to attend class, I ought to go to the classroom,” or “In order to fulfill the duty one ought to have as a student, I ought to attend class.” But a “categorical imperative” has no other condition; it is simply “I ought to …”
Then, does a categorical imperative actually exist? Or, to put it differently, is an absolute law that takes itself alone as its end possible?
Kant says: “When I conceive a categorical imperative, I know at once what it contains. For since the imperative, besides the law, contains only the necessity that the maxim conform to this law, and since the law contains no condition that restricts it, what remains is only the universality of a law in general, to which the maxim of action ought to conform, and it is only such conformity that truly represents the imperative as necessary. Hence there is only one categorical imperative, namely this: act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”IV 428[421]
In another formulation, this command is expressed as: “Do not choose in any other way unless the maxim of your choice is at the same time contained together as a universal law in the same will.” Kant points out that “the above principle of autonomy is the sole moral principle, and this can be made very clear simply by analyzing the concept of morality, because from this it can be seen that the moral principle must be a categorical imperative, but what this imperative requires is precisely and only this autonomy — neither more nor less.”IV 449[440]
That is to say, this is an analytical judgment rather than a synthetic one, because since “morality” lies precisely in “lawfulness,” and if one is to identify a law that is absolutely valid without depending on any conditions, then it can only be “lawfulness” itself; and since “universality” is already contained within the concept of “law,” we can thus, and only thus, arrive at this sole categorical imperative: “Since I have taken away from the will every incentive that could arise from obeying a particular law, there remains nothing left but the universal lawfulness of actions in general. This lawfulness alone is to serve as the principle of the will, that is, I must never conduct myself otherwise than so that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”IV 409[402]
It has already been pointed out that Kant’s “absolute” is not a kind of dogmatism but rather the very opposite of dogmatism; the function of the categorical imperative is not to establish a set of universally applicable moral norms or an absolutist ethical doctrine, because what Kant emphasizes is precisely that, apart from this one sole principle of autonomy, there can be no moral norm that is absolute.
The categorical imperative first of all serves to constrain reason and prevent its presumptuousness. If this categorical imperative is not acknowledged, then ethics will either mistake some relative principle for an absolute one, or fall into confusion through an infinite regress of inquiry or self-contradiction, or else abolish ethics itself by evading the question.
In this way we understand that so-called intrinsic value or intrinsic purpose is precisely this “good will,” that is, the “will that legislates universally” itself. And by virtue of universality itself, I must acknowledge that “the will of every rational being is a will that legislates universally”IV 439[471]; and we know that only human beings are rational beings capable of legislating for themselves (this of course is empirical knowledge), which is why there is the claim that “only human beings are ends.”
According to this understanding of “intrinsic value,” we will find it impossible for ethics to say that nonhuman beings possess “intrinsic value.” For intrinsic value refers to an autonomous legislator taking its own law as an end. And if we cannot require nonhuman beings to bear moral responsibility, then they cannot possibly become ends. Kant states plainly: “Personality is the subject whose actions can be imputed. Therefore moral personality is nothing other than the freedom of a rational being under moral laws.”VI 231[223] Thus we need only ask: does ethics require animals to be responsible for their actions? If they cannot be so required, then animals have no intrinsic value.
We can thus understand why, in the following version of the categorical imperative—“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means.”IV 437[429]—Kant takes pains to emphasize, somewhat verbosely, “humanity in the person of any other.” This is precisely to remind us that the special status of human beings does not lie merely in the identity of being “human,” or in any other capacity humans possess, nor even in any other admirable quality humans may have, but only in moral dignity.
Kant states plainly: “Human beings in the system of nature (as thinking persons, i.e. as rational animals) are beings of no great significance, and, together with the rest of the animals, as products of the earth, they have a common value, even if he excels these animals in understanding and can set ends for himself; this gives him only an external value of his usefulness, that is, an external value of one person in relation to another, in other words, as a commodity in exchange with these animals as things, a price, and here the value he has is still lower than that of the common medium of exchange, namely money, whose value is therefore called superior. Human beings can be regarded only as persons, that is, as such beings who cannot be evaluated merely as means for the ends of others, or even for their own ends, but must be evaluated as ends in themselves, that is, they possess a dignity (an absolute inner value), by which they force all other rational beings in the world to respect them, to compare themselves with any other person of the same kind, and to appraise themselves on a footing of equality.”VI 445[434]
That is to say, even rational capacity, including the capacity of “choice” (that is, of setting one’s own ends), cannot give human beings any value higher than that of animals. For if reason is used merely to pursue interests, then it is nothing more than a means, or a technology of survival, just as animals too possess all kinds of extraordinary abilities, and their capacity to satisfy their own needs is often greater than humanity’s unreliable rational capacity; in this respect, human beings have no superiority—“After all, human beings are not wholly animals, who are indifferent to everything that reason says to them in its self-talk, and use reason merely as an instrument for satisfying their needs as sensuous beings. For if reason were merely to serve human beings in the way instinct has served animals, then the fact that human beings possess reason would not at all elevate them in value above mere animality; in that case reason would be only a special device that nature uses to equip human beings and dispatch them to the same end it has prescribed for animals, without assigning human beings a higher end.”V 69[61]
What alone can give human beings dignity is that they can take themselves as an end. “Autonomy is therefore the ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature.”IV 444[436] What is called autonomy, or legislating for oneself, does not merely mean setting an (external) end for oneself—for example, taking the pursuit of pleasure as one’s end, which would merely be treating oneself as an “instrument” for the pursuit of pleasure; only when one simultaneously takes oneself (one’s good will) as an end is human self-respect brought to the fore. This is the sense in which Kant says that human beings must not be treated merely as means.
Seen in this light, Kant’s ethics is less “human-centered” or “reason-centered” than “morality-centered.” For the center of concern in Kant’s moral philosophy is neither humanity as a species, nor reason merely as a uniquely human capacity, but rather “morality” within human nature. But what does it mean to say that a moral philosophy is centered on morality, or that it is “an ethics whose highest concern is ethics” itself? Isn’t this simply self-evident?
To stress that morality is centered on morality is not mere empty talk. One must remember that critical philosophy is first of all meant to correct knowledge, not provide knowledge. Kant’s ethics is precisely aimed first at correcting ethics’ own loss of self, namely its forgetfulness of the presupposition of ethics—practical reason and its autonomy (freedom). Kant remarks: “Now, when we look back over all the efforts that have hitherto been made to find the moral principle, we need not be surprised that they have all necessarily failed. People saw human beings bound by law through their duty, but they did not think that human beings obey only their own lawgiving, albeit universal. And that humans have only the duty to act in accordance with their own will, which is nevertheless universally lawgiving in relation to natural ends.”IV 440[432]
III. Further Questions
At this point we can ask: what exactly is the relation between Kant’s ethics and the mainstream ethics of our time represented by utilitarianism? They are undoubtedly not the “same” kind of ethics, because their concerns and modes of thought are entirely different. But they also do not seem to be two parallel ethical programs, such as consequentialism and deontology within the utilitarian tradition. In a certain sense, they belong to two different levels of doctrine. Seen this way, my habitual way of referring to “Kant’s ethics” is not really appropriate; perhaps, in accordance with Kant’s own usage, it would be more fitting to subsume the relevant doctrines under the titles “metaphysics of morals” and “Critique of Practical Reason.”
As a supplement, let me quote at length a fine comment by Otfried Höffe: “According to one critical opinion, Kant’s ethics is indifferent to the actual happiness of concrete individuals, and thus falls short of utilitarianism, which defines morality in universal concepts. At first sight, this reproach seems entirely justified. For Kant’s thought experiment of universalization decisively rejects consequentialist deliberation from the standpoint of happiness, and also rejects judging such deliberation. But further examination shows that this reproach is unfounded. What Kant says is that consequentialist deliberation should be excluded in argumentation, but not that it should be excluded when moral maxims are applied to concrete actions; in the latter case such consequentialist deliberation is not only permitted but in most cases absolutely necessary. Far from opposing utilitarianism, Kant is entirely in agreement with it in holding that promoting human happiness is precisely what morality requires; and the presupposition for obeying this injunction is that one must carefully consider the results of one’s actions from the standpoint of others’ happiness. But utilitarianism no longer furnishes a philosophical justification for consequentialism, that is, for the principle of guidance by others’ happiness, whereas Kant prepares for this the categorical imperative together with a rational test of universalization. Besides this, Kant believes that others’ happiness is not the only duty. Finally, Kant investigates a question that utilitarianism has not raised, namely, under what a priori conditions a subject is actually capable of being moral. The answer lies in the autonomy of the will. In this respect, for Kant, utilitarian ethics does not simply appear as false, but as something that needs to be supplemented both morally and philosophically. It is even less Kant’s opposing model; rather, it is an ethical reflection that is insufficiently thorough and too shallow in its grasp.”[⑩]
Although Kant’s ethics does not permit duties to nonrational beings, it can require duties concerning nonrational beings. Kant points out: “Human beings have no duties toward any being other than human beings; and if he still thinks he has such a duty, this is due to an ambiguity in a reflective concept, and what he takes to be duties to other beings are in fact nothing but duties to himself; he is induced into this misunderstanding because he confuses his duties in relation to other beings with duties toward those beings.”VI 453[442]
In fact, this does not conflict with the demands put forward by environmental ethics. For the demands of environmental ethics are usually: “(because of certain truths disclosed by environmental ethics,) human beings ought to toward the nonhuman …” In this demand, although the “end” on the first level, that is, the object toward which an action is directed, is the “nonhuman” in “human beings ought to toward the nonhuman …”; the “end” in the ethical sense is the “certain truths” that are usually omitted. Therefore, in the sense of Kantian ethics, this “demand” is still a duty “concerning” rather than “toward” the nonhuman.
Kant himself also provides many reasons for “duties concerning the nonhuman.” For example:
“A natural observer will eventually slowly come to like objects that at first offended his senses, if he reveals in them the great purposiveness of their organization and thereby gives his reason pleasure in observing them; and Leibniz carefully returned to the leaf on which he had examined with a microscope an insect he had inspected, because he believed he had been edified by the sight, as though he had enjoyed a good deed through it.”V 167[160]
“In regard to the beautiful, though lifeless, things in nature, a mere propensity for destruction is contrary to one’s duties to oneself; for such destruction weakens or roots out from human beings that feeling which, though not moral by itself alone, nevertheless at least prepares the sensibility for morality and greatly promotes the moral disposition, namely, even to like something without a use in view.”VI 453[443]
“In regard to the living, though irrational, part of creation, the renunciation of rough and at the same time cruel treatment of animals is opposed even more deeply to human beings’ duties to themselves, because such treatment dulls sympathy with animal suffering in one’s heart, and a natural predisposition that is very favorable to morality in relation to others is thereby weakened and gradually eradicated; although the prompt slaughtering of animals (done without pain), or their labor so long as it is not continuously strained beyond its capacity (things which human beings must also be unable to endure), also falls within human authority; by contrast, painful experiments on nature undertaken purely for observation should be detested, even if the purpose can be achieved without them. — Even gratitude for the long service of an old horse or old dog (as if they were members of the household) is indirectly a human duty, that is, in regard to these animals, but directly it is often only a duty of human beings to themselves.”VI 454[443]
Notice that in just these three passages Kant argues for duties concerning the nonhuman from three different starting points—“purposiveness,” “aesthetic feeling,” and “sympathy.” One can imagine that, within the framework of Kantian ethics, many more and richer ways could still be found to support human duties concerning the nonhuman.
One might object: the reasons offered here are not absolutely universal. For example, some people may not lose the slightest sympathy for human beings simply because they have become accustomed to cruelty toward animals; others may be unable to feel any purposiveness in nature—then what? We must keep firmly in mind that Kant’s ethics by no means aims to provide dogmatic, universally applicable ethical doctrines; rather, it is precisely opposed to this sort of moral authoritarianism—apart from the principle of autonomy, no moral duty is absolute. Kant’s categorical imperative itself merely provides a corrective mechanism, and if, on this basis, one additionally incorporates some reflective reasons, or places it within different ethical traditions, there may be ample room for rich development.
MacIntyre points out: “The doctrine of the categorical imperative gives me a test stone for refusing existing maxims; it does not tell me from where I should derive the rules of conduct that must first be tested. Thus Kant’s doctrine parasitizes on some already existing morality, within which it allows us to sort things out—or rather, if the test stone it supplies is a reliable one, it always allows us to sort things out within the bounds of existing morality.”[11]
But MacIntyre then goes on to object: “But in fact this test stone is very hard to trust, even on its own terms. For Kant’s test of a genuine moral injunction is: can I universalize it consistently, forever? Yet with enough cleverness and flexibility, almost any injunction can be universalized consistently, because all I need do is describe the conduct in question in such a way that, if the maxim can be universalized, it will allow me to do what I want while forbidding others to do the things that would make the maxim fail. Kant asks whether I can consistently universalize the maxim ‘I may break a promise whenever it suits me.’ But suppose he were to ask whether I can consistently universalize the maxim ‘I may break a promise only when….’ The ellipsis can be filled with cleverly designed language so that the maxim applies to my present situation, namely, that if others observe this maxim it will inconvenience me, not to mention showing that the maxim cannot be consistently universalized. Thus the test of the categorical imperative in fact only constrains those who are not clever and flexible enough. Needless to say, this is hardly the outcome Kant intended.”[12]
It must be admitted that this is indeed a criticism of Kantian ethics worthy of serious attention. But one may respond to it as follows: first, Kant emphasizes legislating for oneself, not using laws to constrain others, because others too are constrained only by the laws they themselves have made; people set laws out of the earnest wish to “do justice to their own reason” or to seek “intellectual self-satisfaction”V 125[117] rather than in order to pass judgment on others, and while playing tricks may allow one to evade criticism from others, it probably cannot truly satisfy one’s own reason; second, Kant explicitly says: “Of course, these laws still require judgment sharpened by experience, in order, on the one hand, to distinguish the occasions on which they can be applied, and on the other, to give them access to the will of human beings and firmness in execution.”IV 396[389] It is thus clear that Kant did not fail to consider the problem of how to determine in concrete cases when laws apply, but left this issue to the Critique of Judgment for explanation, and further discussion of judgment lies beyond the scope of this article; third, a similar criticism also applies to the study of natural science—scientists will always find some “flexible” way to add various limiting conditions and tuning parameters so that a certain law survives any test, and any theory can interpret any “counterexample” it encounters as a “special case”; for example, Ptolemy’s geocentric model could maintain its accuracy by continually adding epicycles, at the cost that these “ingenious” additions would make the theoretical system increasingly bloated. And the “universality” of laws that scientists actually consider when making choices includes not only their accuracy, but also their scope; that is to say, a law that requires a large number of special cases and restrictions is less universal than a law that can simply be applied to a broader range without too many cumbersome additional conditions. Of course, a deeper discussion belongs to the philosophy of science and will not be pursued further here.
It is worth noting that, in the relevant sections of the doctrine of right, Kant discusses the initial acquisition of natural resources, especially land. He thinks: “All human beings are originally in lawful possession of the soil, that is to say, they have a right to the place that nature or chance has placed them in (without their will). … The possession of all human beings on earth, which precedes all their juridical acts and is established by nature itself, is an original common possession. Its concept is not empirical, not dependent on conditions of time, like the concept of an original common possession that has been invented but can never be proved; rather, it is a concept of practical reason that contains a principle a priori, and only in accordance with this principle can human beings make lawful use of places on earth.”VI 271[262]
But Kant’s discussion here is open to question. It would seem that one does not necessarily have to “take possession” first in order to have the right to make use of certain things. The relation between human beings and things they have the right to use may also be a relation of “custodial care on behalf of others.”
What, moreover, does it mean to possess land? Kant says: “How far does the right to occupy a piece of land extend? As far as the capacity to hold it under one’s control extends. That is to say, as far as one can defend it when one wants to make it one’s own; as if the land were saying: if you cannot protect me, then you cannot command me either. Therefore the question of whether the sea is open or closed must also be decided accordingly: for example, within the range of cannon fire, no one may engage in fishing off the land shore that already belongs to a state…”VI 273[265]
But here too Kant’s statement remains doubtful. On the one hand, modern human beings’ capacity for control is so great that the range of a state’s “cannon” can cover the entire globe. On the other hand, people’s capacity for control is so small that they cannot accurately estimate whether the potential impact of some activity on their own land will harm the rights of others…
In fact, Kant himself was aware of the difficulty of this issue, and he admits: “The indefiniteness of an externally acquirable object, both in quantity and in quality, makes this issue (the issue of uniquely original external acquisition) the most difficult of all issues to resolve.”VI 275[266]
This issue concerns human beings’ appropriation of natural things and its limits, and deserves close examination. But this is already a juridical issue, and is relatively far removed from the core of Kant’s ethics, so I will not discuss it here.
References
Li Qiuling, ed.: Complete Works of Kant, Vol. 2, Renmin University of China Press, 2004
Li Qiuling, ed.: Complete Works of Kant, Vol. 3, Renmin University of China Press, 2004
Li Qiuling, ed.: Complete Works of Kant, Vol. 4, Renmin University of China Press, 2005
Li Qiuling, ed.: Complete Works of Kant, Vol. 5, Renmin University of China Press, 2007
Li Qiuling, ed.: Complete Works of Kant, Vol. 6, Renmin University of China Press, 2007
[Kant] Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Deng Xiaomang, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2005
[Ger.] Otfried Höffe: Kant: Life, Works, and Influence, trans. Zheng Yiqian, People’s Publishing House, 2007
[Eng.] George Edward Moore: Principia Ethica, trans. Chang He, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2003
[U.S.] Alasdair MacIntyre: A Short History of Ethics, trans. Gong Qun, Commercial Press, 2003
He Huaihong, ed.: Ecological Ethics—Spiritual Resources and Philosophical Foundations, Hebei University Press, 2002
[U.S.] Holmes Rolston: Environmental Ethics, trans. Yang Tongjin, proofread by Xu Guangming, China Social Sciences Press, 2000
[U.S.] Nash: The Rights of Nature, trans. Yang Tongjin, proofread by Liang Zhiping, Qingdao Publishing House, 1999
[U.S.] Eugene Hargrove: Foundations of Environmental Ethics, trans. Yang Tongjin, Jiang Ya, and Guo Hui, Chongqing Publishing House, 2007
[U.S.] Peter S. Wenz: Modern Environmental Ethics, trans. Song Yubo and Zhu Danqiong, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2007
[Eng.] Brian Baxter: An Introduction to Environmentalism, trans. Zeng Jianping, Chongqing Publishing House, 2007
[Aus.] Val Plumwood: Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, trans. Ma Tianjie and Li Lili, Chongqing Publishing House, 2007
Allen W. Wood and Onora O’Neill: Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Natur, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 72, (1998), pp.189-228
[①] [U.S.] Holmes Rolston: Environmental Ethics, trans. Yang Tongjin, proofread by Xu Guangming, China Social Sciences Press, 2000, pp. 2, p1~p2
[②] [Eng.] Brian Baxter: An Introduction to Environmentalism, trans. Zeng Jianping, Chongqing Publishing House, 2007, p. 51
[③] [U.S.] Peter S. Wenz: Modern Environmental Ethics, trans. Song Yubo and Zhu Danqiong, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2007, p. 455
[④] He Huaihong, ed.: Ecological Ethics—Spiritual Resources and Philosophical Foundations, Hebei University Press, 2002, p. 343
[⑤] [U.S.] Nash: The Rights of Nature, trans. Yang Tongjin, proofread by Liang Zhiping, Qingdao Publishing House, 1999
[⑥] See Nicholas Bunnin and Yu Jiyuan, eds.: An English-Chinese Dictionary of Western Philosophy, p. 1050
[⑦] He Huaihong, ed.: Ecological Ethics—Spiritual Resources and Philosophical Foundations, Hebei University Press, 2002, p. 305
[⑧] All quotations from Kant in this article are taken from Li Qiuling, ed., Complete Works of Kant (see References for details). For the sake of brevity, all notes are marked in the text in the form “V 93[87],” indicating Volume 5 of the complete works, page 93 of the Chinese translation, and marginal page 87.
[⑨] [Eng.] George Edward Moore: Principia Ethica, trans. Chang He, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2003, p. 51
[⑩] [Ger.] Otfried Höffe: Kant: Life, Works, and Influence, trans. Zheng Yiqian, People’s Publishing House, 2007, p. 173
[11] [U.S.] Alasdair MacIntyre: A Short History of Ethics, trans. Gong Qun, Commercial Press, 2003, p. 261, p197
[12] [U.S.] Alasdair MacIntyre: A Short History of Ethics, trans. Gong Qun, Commercial Press, 2003, pp. 261~262, p197~198
Latest Comments
- Bu Yan Kong Jing
2008-05-16 00:03:16 http://deleted
I didn’t read it carefully, but I kind of feel bad for you having put in so much hard work to post it! Thinking about next year’s graduation thesis makes my head spin~~~ Tomorrow my advisor is meeting me about the thesis proposal, and I don’t know how I’m going to brush him off.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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