Kant and the Ethics of Respect
April 29, 2025
Moral obligations are unconditional/categorical.
Now, all imperatives command either hypothetically, or categorically. The [hypothetical imperatives] represent the practical necessity of a possible action as a means to achieving something else that one wants (or that at least is possible for one to want).
— Kant ([1786] 2011, IV 414)
The categorical imperative would be the one that represented an action as objectively necessary by itself, without reference to another end. . . .
— Kant ([1786] 2011, IV 414)
. . . if the action would be good merely as a means to something else, the imperative is hypothetical; if the action is represented as good in itself, hence as necessary in a will that in itself conforms to reason, as its principle, then it is categorical.
— Kant ([1786] 2011, IV 414)
Kant’s ethics stands out for it’s emphasis on respect for “moral law,” that is, unconditionally binding moral obligations. At the heart of [Kant’s] analysis lay the idea that morally virtuous agents act out of respect for the moral law, and not simply in pursuit of their own interests and desires. In other words, virtuous agents respond to obligations as obligations.
— Rehg (2017, sec. 4.1)
Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.
. . .
So act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a UNIVERSAL LAW OF NATURE.
— Kant ([1786] 2011, IV 421)
Imagine a general system of action in which everyone follows my maxim—that is, my plan of action—without exception.
So act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.
— Kant ([1786] 2011, IV 429)
Kant believed the first and second versions to be different ways of expressing the same Categorical Imperative. For present purposes, we may think of their relationship this way:
When I act out of respect for universal moral law (the first formula), I act in a way that any rational agent can freely accept in good conscience. Thus others can, in principle, autonomously consent to my action. But if I act in ways to which they can consent, then I respect them as ends.
— Rehg (2017, sec. 4.1.2)
Morality thus consists in referring all action to the legislation by which alone a kingdom of ends is possible. This legislation must, however, be found in every rational being itself, and be able to arise from its will, the principle of which is thus:
to do no action on a maxim other than in such a way, that it would be consistent with it that it be a universal law, and thus only in such a way that the will could through its maxim consider itself as at the same time universally legislating [for a kingdom of ends].
— Kant ([1786] 2011, IV 434)
Act only according to those policies that all rational beings could agree to as legislators making laws for a kingdom of ends.
— Rehg (2017, sec. 4.1.2)
All actions that affect the rights of others are unlawful unless their maxims are suitable for publication.
— Kant (1927, app. 2)
An act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behavior that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, uncoerced, general agreement.
— Scanlon (1998, 153)
It would be unreasonable to reject a principle because it imposed a burden on you when every alternative principle would impose much greater burdens on others [at least one person].
— Gordon-Solmon (2019, 159)
a moral norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side-effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion in a rational discourse
— Habermas (1998, 42)
One may act only in ways that show due moral regard for human beings as members of society, that is: respect for the agency of human beings as autonomous, and concern for the needs of dependent human beings.
— Rehg (2017, sec. 4.4)